The Central Coast Section Championships tied a bow around the 2025 season, as both the boys’ and girls’ teams competed in the prestigious event. Both the boys’ and the girls’ teams earned solid 7th place finishes.
The boys were lead by Riu Yamada’s 16:34 mark, only eight seconds shy of 14th place and the last ticket to the California State meet. Riu, Tarun Gandhi (16:52/28th) and Kento Murase (17:27/46th) are not that far from State. Dropping 10-15 seconds/mile is a solid and common goal for a high school boy to improve in 12 months, with consistent but safe training; and 25 seconds is above average but not unreasonable. Six of the seven athletes on the podium were seniors, demonstrating the value of experience–and accumulated miles. Monta Vista had one senior (Ethan Yang), one junior (Kento), and five sophomores (Riu, Tarun, Sam Heinonen, Constantine Chua, and Akshat Ambekar) on the line; we have so much potential.
While the boys had one senior on the starting line, the girls had none–the girls lined up two juniors, three sophmores, and two freshmen. Miranda Hsu lead the squad with a strong comback after missing several meets–Mira had to walk the Baylands Two meet in order to have a qualifying mark. Many, many hours on the bike kept her fitness, which combined with her grit for a 21:04 mark and a 29th place finish. Melinda Zhao and Naomi Hsu came in back-to-back in 31st and 32nd place. Alexandra Qiu, Myra Mishra, Kaitlyn Lum, and Sophia Li competed the team and give us a young squad with lot of potential.
The CCS meet does not make it easy to PR. The pressure is high, especially for a team with half our runners appearing at CCS for the first time. Akshat, Tarun, Ethan, Sam, Riu, and Mel all had PRs; everyone got experience at a championship meet. Next time, we will be more prepared for what CCS is like! Even more than preparing for a future CCS, I think one of the most important parts of this experience is to continue to improve our performance in pressure situations. The need to perform under pressure is not just about athletics; being able to perform when something is important to us includes big tests, job or college interviews, presentations…the only way we get better at performing under pressure is by going through the experience, again and again. We all gain no matter where we place, PR or no.
Also, thank you to everyone who came to support their teammates! Caroline, Luna, and Oliver were appreciated by everyone. Showing up for your teammates matters!
And finally…congratulations to our varsity boys who were recognized as one of the all-CCS scholastic teams for the cross-country season. Well done, boys! We can care about both athletics and academics at the same time.
Results are posted at XCStats and the Lynbrook site.
