Palisades High senior cross country and track star Marissa Williams signed her national letter of intent to UC Berkeley this afternoon and afterwards she couldn’t stop smiling.
“She’s very happy,” Pali High Coach Bob Macias said. “I think it’s a great place for her and she’s excited about it.”
Williams made her college choice official at a table set up in the school gymnasium in front of approximately 50 classmates, teammates and faculty members and revealed later that she didn’t make up her mind until Monday.
“Cal was always kind of under my radar but I went up there with an open mind and within the first five minutes I fell in love with the place,” Williams said. “It has a very Bohemian atmosphere, [assistant coach] Chas Davis and I hit it off immediately and the girls were all so sweet and encouraging. I like the rain and it was foggy and drizzly during my stay. There are also a bunch of vegan joints there, which I like because I’m a vegetarian.”
Williams spent two days at California (Oct. 19-20) — the second of three campuses she visited. She had previously taken a trip to Yale and just flew back from Duke on Sunday, but something about the Bay Area struck a chord with her. She will join a Bears squad that finished seventh at this year’s Pac-12 Championships led by Bethan Knights, the state cross country winner last fall and the state 3,200 meter champion in the spring as a senior at Irvine Northwood.
Already the most accomplished female distance runner in City Section history, Williams is also a stellar student and took academics into consideration when choosing which universities to visit.
“All of them were academically really challenging so it was a matter of how comfortable I was,” Williams said about her decision. “One thing about Cal is that the APs I’m taking will count for credit, so I can’t slack off this semester.”
Williams runs in the City Section preliminaries tomorrow and will try for her third consecutive individual title Nov. 22 at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. On the track she set City records in the 1,600 and 3,200 as a sophomore and last spring she became the first girl in City finals meet history to sweep the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 races.
— Steve Galluzzo
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