At first, senior Ariel Ben Mocha only joined cross country for two reasons: to stay in shape for soccer, her main sport at the time, and because she had done cross country at Medea Creek Middle School in eighth grade. However, she didn’t expect to fall in love with the sport so much. In the future, she definitely plans on continuing running as a hobby and is even considering running at a collegiate level.
“What we have is really special, and I don’t think a lot of other sports get the kind of community that we get,” Ben Mocha said. “The team has become kind of a force to be reckoned with. My freshman year, we were a group of less than 20 girls, and now that we’re almost 40 girls, it’s pretty cool.”
Ben Mocha’s favorite part of being in cross country is the community it has provided her. She calls the team her “second family” and is grateful that she has gotten to grow close with girls that she may have otherwise never met or talked to. Ben Mocha also loves leading others, so when she was elected as one of the team’s captains this year, she was really excited.
“I like trying to set a good example for everyone, and it helps me be more accountable,” she said. “I want to be a good example and a role model to the girls.”
Ben Mocha had a phenomenal senior season, setting massive personal bests in every single one of her races and even winning her first ever race at the Oak Canyon League Meet, Oak Park’s home course. After a rough junior year, she was able to come back stronger than ever and even made the CIF postseason team, a major accomplishment for her.
“Postseason has been something I’ve wanted to be a part of since freshman year, and finally being able to get my fitness to that level is super special to me,” Ben Mocha said. “The coaches are super supportive and they have become such close mentors and people I keep close in my life.”
Ben Mocha has found that her teammates bring her a lot of joy because she knows she can always count on them to put her in a good mood and help her through hard times.
“I love seeing the cross-country girls because they’re so genuinely themselves every day, and they smile, and they’re them and they’re giggling and goofy and silly,” Ben Mocha said. “When I’m having a bad day, I know that they’re there, and they’re usually smiling most of the time.”
Like many of her other teammates, Ben Mocha appreciates the trip the team takes up to Mammoth for summer conditioning.
“I think that’s when the team gets really, really close,” she said. “It’s just such a fun week because you’re up in Mammoth, the weather’s beautiful and you spend so much time up there with them that you’re forced to get close to them.”
Ben Mocha also loves that the team can bond over food, like when they go out to eat after a race for a rewarding celebration.
“After a race, my favorite place to go eat is In-N-Out, no matter what, without fail,” she said.
Outside of running, Ben Mocha is extremely passionate about raising awareness around mental health. She is president of an on-campus club, Breaking the Stigma, which discusses mental health in athletes, and is a campus captain for a nonprofit known as the Hidden Opponent.
“I would say mental health has been a really big thing for me over the past couple of years. I think it hasn’t been talked about enough, especially in athletes,” Ben Mocha said. “I received education on mental health from licensed professionals and I am able to spread this information to other students.”
Her passion for mental health stemmed partially from struggling with setbacks from it herself. She got injured her freshman year and was still recovering her sophomore year, cross-training and trying to get back into running. When junior year came around, she cared so much about the sport that she believes it messed with her mindset.
“It was a mix of my mental and physical health, but I thought it was more my mental at first. Then, I realized it was my physical as well,” Ben Mocha said.
While she didn’t know it then, Ben Mocha was suffering from severe low iron levels, a common issue among female runners. At the end of her junior year, she tested her ferritin levels, a protein that stores iron in your blood. Her levels returned as a four, when the coaches recommended an appropriate level for runners to be a 30.
Ben Mocha began supplementing her iron in May, and luckily, she’s started to feel a difference, attributing a lot of her success this season to figuring out her problems with iron.
Other than mental health and running, Ben Mocha has also found other hobbies that she loves to spend time doing. One of them she originally only took for elective credits, but surprisingly ended up loving it: ceramics.
“It’s just very therapeutic. I really love the people that are there, and building things is kind of cool,” Ben Mocha said. “I use some of the stuff that I made, and I like all of my stuff being actually functional.”
Every now and then, she’ll pick up a guitar and play around on it, refreshing a skill she learned as a kid. When she’s at home, oftentimes she’ll have her German Shepherd, Odin, laying by her side. Between school, running and her part-time job at Cricca’s Italian Deli in Woodland Hills, free time is hard to come by. However, when she gets it, Ben Mocha loves to spend it outdoors.
“I like to be outside, genuinely, even if it’s not running, like going for a hike, going to the beach or going to a park,” she said. “I think you need to be outside. At least for me, I need to be outside to be sane. Even when I’m in the off-season, I need to go do something.”
At the end of the day, Ben Mocha truly values person-to-person connection. She couldn’t live without her family or her teammates and appreciates having them there for her when times get tough.
“I am so grateful for having a good community and a good group of people to be around. I feel like that’s pretty hard to live without.”
This article is part of a larger collection of stories covering the girls cross country seniors. Check out the other seniors in the sports section on our website.
