On Tuesday, September 9, Monta Vista traveled to Fremont High School for the Firebird Invitational, a fast and flat 2.05-mile course. This is the first time that Monta Vista competed at Firebird, and we were thinking we would see some quick times. The meet featured not only our hosts and friendly rivals from Fremont, but also SCVAL competitors from Wilcox, Santa Clara, Cupertino, and MacDonald—making Firebird a good early-season test.
I want to address one issue right away. I made an error when creating a meet sheet for Firebird and posted incorrect times for the start of the races. Everyone did get to race, but the Varsity boys had to run in the JV race. Again, I apologize for the mistake, this is not the standard I want to have as your head coach. Despite this, everyone did roll with this situation, and I am grateful to all of you.
The Varsity Girls were up first, and they were blazing—the team scored a perfect 15 points. Although a few Cupertino runners broke into the top eight, their team was incomplete and didn’t factor into the scoring. MVXC’s depth shined, with our fifth runner finishing ahead of the top athletes from both Fremont and Wilcox. Miranda Hsu led the way with a strong third-place finish, and Alexandra Qiu stepped up in her varsity debut to give us a full team lineup. Outstanding effort all around!
The JV Girls carried the momentum with a dominating performance of their own. Freshmen Yoyo Zhong, Eva Huang, Zeynap Dogen, and Taylor Orr swept the top four spots—the JV squad nearly matching the varsity team’s perfect score. What makes this even more exciting is how young the girls’ squad is—only two juniors, no seniors. Twelve of the 18 girls on MVXC25 are running in their first cross-country season. This group has enormous upside, both this year and in the seasons ahead.
The MVXC boys all went in one mass race, and as expected with the Varsity boys dropping down to the JV race, they dominated. If they had been in the Varsity race, the marks put up by Kento Murase, Riu Yamada, Tarun Gandhi, Constantine Chua, and Sam Heinonen would have got them in the top 20; and while we can’t know if their times would have been faster with competitors around them, my guess is yes. These boys are going to do well in our upcoming races in Oregon, at Baylands, and at Half Moon Bay.
Like the girls, the boys have a young team. There was only one senior and one junior in the top 12 MVXC finishers at Firebird, and three of the top 12 are running their first season of cross-country. We can look forward to some excitement this season and in the future!
We tried to get mile splits for everyone, but the official mile marker was unclear, so the data is not exact. What we did notice, though, is that several athletes—Kento, Riu, Yoyo, Tarun, Jayden, Myra, Yibo*, Soma, Medha, and Vikram—appeared to run particularly strong in the second half of the race. The back half of a distance race is always a bit of a grit test, and pushing through at that stage can make a big difference. There’s no single right strategy that is best for everyone, but keep experimenting: try going out a little harder, holding steady longer, or saving more for the final push. The important part is to keep testing yourself and learning what works.
The spirit of our team is exciting! We saw high-five lines at the finish and a huge and loud cheer group before the final kick, supporting both teammates and runners from other teams. MVXC25 is embracing the community spirit of cross-country! Virtually everyone stayed to the end and helped out. I think most everyone thanked a volunteer who helped make the meet happen—these races do not just happen in a vacuum, people work hard to make these meets a great experience for us.
Complete results are up on XCStats and Lynbrook Sports. And follow montavistaxc on Instagram…the team beat this blog post with an Insta!
Next up, 23 MVXC athletes are heading to Oregon for the Three Course Challenge, then the entire team will complete two weeks from now in the SCVAL opener at Baylands.
Don’t forget to see Coach Flatow this week if you would like an SCVAL Championship shirt–just 8 weeks from now!
*If anyone has watched Yibo’s kick at the end of a cross-country race this makes sense! Based on the eye-test, Yibo hammers the back end of a race. Perfect sprinter form! We can’t wait to see him running workouts for the 400 m when track season rolls around.