What a fabulous day! I can’t recall a better season opening cross country meet than our trip to the Lagoon Valley Classic Invitational yesterday. Let’s relive a few of the highlights together.
Some Blazing Two Mile Marks!
The first races at Lagoon Valley are on the two miles course and focused on the newer runners. The Monta Vista newcomers showed that they were comfortable getting on the course to represent MVXC! Freshmen Ethan Wong, Takumi Matsunami, and Rishab Madhan were the first runners to cross a finish line for MVXC in 2026, with 11:41, 12:12, and 12:20–all three boys finished in the top six of the freshman boys’ race, and all three were under the old Monta Vista all-time record for the Lagoon Valley two-mile course. That’s the record for all age groups, not just freshmen! Peter Dunn, Shawn Zeng, and Aditya Prasad all joined the first three boys on the podium, and their marks were in the top 40 of all Monta Vista freshmen to open at Lagoon Valley. Harry Zhu’s 16:02 missed a medal by less than 10 seconds. The freshman boys finished in second place overall to the host Vacaville team. This was an outstanding team performance to open our team’s season, and begin this group’s MVXC career.
The frosh-soph boys were led to a seventh-place team finish by Soma Pujara’s 13:19 mark, and two big personal records; a 1:23 PR for Jayden Mattekatt, and an impressive 5:13 personal record for Leon Zhu. It is rewarding to see Leon’s hard work over the spring and summer pay off in this opening race. Freshman Katherine Wang had a promising first cross-country race; after only a limited amount of practice, she put up a 15:46 two-mile mark, good for a 19th place medal and the 6th fastest time every put up by a Monta Vista freshman. Sophomores Eva Huang and Yoyo Zhong joined Katherine on the podium, while Sophia Li missed the podium by a few agonizing seconds. The frosh-soph girls’ team finished in a strong fifth-place out of 13 teams.
The varsity girls had an outstanding day, taking third-place; this may have been the best team finish for our varsity girls at Lagoon Valley. Training partners Taylor Orr and Miranda Hsu were out front from the gun, surprising no one who watched them push, pull, and encourage each other in practice all season long. Taylor and Miranda finished in 6th and 9th place wtih , while Naomi Hsu, Melinda Zhao, and Alex Qiu joined them on the podium. The varsity boys’ team took 9th place out of 20 teams, with Tarun Gandhi’s 16:47 and Akshat Ambekar’s 17:54 marks carrying them both to the podium.
The junior varsity races are both on the two-mile course. Junior Advaith Prabhu’s first race ended with his 13:42 mark placing him on the podium; the boys’ team of Advaith, Aidan Cushman-Kihnley, Kavyansh Kumawat, Aric Obaidur, and Vikram Mallya took ninth. Vishakha Shastri and Alex Perrault both landed on the podium in the girl’s junior varsity race.
Personal Records at Lagoon Valley
Distance running, and life, is about improvement, I think. Medals and awards are nice, but everyone at every level has the potential to continually improve and make the best of their abilities. Another Steve Prefontaine quote is something like measuring success more by how far you travel, rather than where you end up. I like that. Plus, think about where we would end up if all of us committed to improve our running diligently and consistently for four years. The only goal, improve. We would end up in a great place!
Here are all the personal records set at Lagoon Valley in 2026. Leon, Caroline–WOW.
Monta Vista Personal Records Set At Lagoon Valley Classic 2026
| Athlete | Distance | Time | PR By |
| Leon Zhu | 2 | 13:55 | 5:13 |
| Caroline Labudde | 2 | 18:00 | 4:05 |
| Naomi Hsu | 3 | 21:08 | 1:50 |
| Aric Obaidur | 2 | 17:02 | 1:27 |
| Jayden Mattekatt | 2 | 13:43 | 1:22 |
| Tarun Gandhi | 3 | 16:47 | 1:19 |
| Jimin Park | 2 | 14:29 | 1:15 |
| Aadit Shinde | 2 | 14:51 | 1:02 |
| Melinda Zhao | 3 | 22:32 | 0:59 |
| Eva Huang | 2 | 16:12 | 0:41 |
| Luna Lee | 2 | 19:57 | 0:35 |
Amazing Spirit
This MVXC team has some of the best team spirit imaginable. I don’t always get to personally observe all the ways our team shows spirit at Lagoon Valley; in the first race of the season, I want to be at the starting line for each group, and so the schedule and the course layout keeps me pinned in a 50 M or so circle. But when I did leave, the first thing I saw was Taylor, Alex Q, Kavyansh, Naomi, Myra, Medha, and others hanging on the rail as long as there was a Monta Vista athlete racing. There was not a crowd in our camp staring at phones. There was a LOT of purple glitter in our hair. Other teams and athletes might have a ‘when can we go home?’ vibe with athletes taking off when their race was over, but not Monta Vista. Your coaches are all proud of that spirit. And I sense that you are proud of it, too, and you feel different from most other teams. Being part of a great team is a wonderful experience, and we all contribute to the team culture.
The Last Hundred Meters (or so)
I was able to watch a few finishes and pretty much every Monta Vista runner finished strong. It can take a while to learn how to process a finish in a cross country race, because those last few meters do matter, but context also matters; this can be confusing. What I mean is, I always hated being outkicked in a distance race, but I’d rather be outkicked for 9th and finish 10th than pass six runners in the last 100 meters and take 55th-place. So it’s a constant process to figure out how to leave it all on the course over a two or three mile race, and then still reach back to find something extra to try to pass one more person or hold off that runner who is charging at us–and then live with the result while mentally steeling ourselves for an even better finish in the next race. That’s a lot, particularly for a new runner, and learning this is a process. Here are a few random thoughts I have, pick and choose and find some ideas that resonate with you:
- Competitors around you are gifts, competitors can help you find something inside you that you did not know you had. The word competition comes from Latin root words meaning “strive together” or “striving together.”
- If you speed up, you are using different muscles and energy groups, and you might actually feel better when you are running faster. Steve Prefontaine used to say that he’d speed up and suddenly think, “I can catch that guy!” I have felt that surge, too. It is a great feeling!
- If you got passed by someone right at the end, I don’t think it is helpful to think, “maybe I should have saved some more energy for that finish.” If you had saved more energy in that middle mile, then maybe you would not have even been close to that runner at the finish, and you would have had the opportunity to outkick someone further back in the pack. Maybe a useful thought is, “I want to do a few more thirty-thirties after our next tempo workout.”
- THEN, after that thought, go high-five that runner that outkicked you, tell them they ran great, and remember that trying to hold them off shaved a few seconds after your personal record!
- I think it’s useful to try to avoid being performative at the end of a race–I mean, we don’t need to try to display how tired we are and how hard we just ran. We are all tired, and sometimes we do simply collapse (I went unconscious after a particularly awful day at CIM; I think that race is a bit haunted). But if we can hold it together, congratulate the runners who finish around us, keep moving and grab our water and clear the finishing area, I believe that approach keeps us stronger and more focused on competing for every last spot in the last 100 meters of a race. I’ll tell you a personal story about how my own high school coach helped me see that my own internal thoughts were getting in the way of me racing at my best. It’s a personally embarrassing story, but it was one of the most useful things I ever learned.
- My friend Ben Rosario was the founder and first head coach of Hoka Northern Arizona Elite (he also helps me refresh the MVXC season plan now and then). Ben told me once how crazy it made him when an athlete would say that they just couldn’t kick at the end. He’d say, “Are you telling me that if a big dog came out of those woods and started chasing you could not run any faster? Or a bear?” That always made me laugh, and when I’d be trying to reach back I’d imagine some big mean dog coming out of a backyard to chase me down the street!
Fighting for that last spot really is fun, and you will get some great stories, too.
Some Useful/Fun Web Links
Compete results are posted on XCStats.
There is an album of great Lagoon Valley photos taken by Coach Smith.
Hoodies, Crew Necks, Jackets
I hope you like your Boathouse warm up jacket! These were new last year. I think everyone knows we ran out of XS and S this year, so your jacket may be a little large; if so, we are going to try to fix that, by ordering some more smaller sizes.
This gives you an opportunity. If you like your jacket, and would like to have a personalized jacket that you can keep all four years for cross country and for track and field, and keep this jacket after you graduate, you can order one. I want to place an order next week. You can order your jacket on the MVHS student store. We will only do this once per year (the prices are much more reasonable when we have at least a dozen jackets), so if you want one, please order yours now.
There are also team hoodies and crew necks on sale at the store; it will be cooler in the morning before long. We will also be placing only one order for hoodies and crews this season.
