Monta Vista Cross Country headed to the coast to race at the Artichoke Invitational at Half Moon Bay High School on October 4, 2025. This is always a fun meet with an energized atmosphere.
The Artichoke is a tight, fast 2.3 mile course around Half Moon Bay high, and includes some fun features like hay bales and a wee bump of a hill. Coach Flatow ran this when he was in high school and earned his own medal there in 1976, believe it or not, so he has some fond memories of the race. Coach Farnsworth, the Half Moon Bay coach, is a great guy and runs a strong meet.
MVXC did great! The varsity boys finished in 8th place out of a 27 team field, lead by sophomore Riu Yamada’s 33rd place finish; the frosh-soph boys team also took 8th, the freshman boys earned 9th, and the JV boys came home in 16th. First year runner Alex Qiu’s 37th place finish paced the varsity girls to a 11th place team ranking, while the frosh-soph girls had the highest team finish of the day–4th place! These finishing places understate the potential of our teams; we don’t graduate any of the runners who scored for our varsity teams, and if our sophomores who ran in varsity had ran in the frosh-soph races, those teams would have been on the podium. Speaking of…a shout out to freshman Taylor Orr; when she heard that Miranda Hsu would not be able to run, Taylor came forward without coach asking, and asked if she could run in varsity just so that the team would be able to score. That is wonderful, wonderful team spirit, thinking about what her teammates needed and how she could step up.
Zeynep Dogan took home an individual medal for her 17:46, her first invite medal of her career (but I’m guessing, not her last). All of us should remember to keep pushing–we never know when our chance for a medal will come, and we never know a little more effort to pass one more person or holding off one more person trying to pass could be the difference in a podium spot or a team win–or a personal record.
Artichoke 2025 put a spotlight on the improvement that our runners have earned. Out of 21 MVXC athletes running the Half Moon Bay course for the second time, 19 earned new personal records; Myra, Darren, Mel, Sam, Riu, Kento, and Tarun all lopped more than a minute off their marks from last year. For all our athletes, this is a tribute to the hard work they did over the past year.
Personal Records Set at the Artichoke Invitational 2025
| Name | Yr | Mark | Improvement |
| Myra Mishra | So | 18:47 | 3:35 |
| Darren Hsu | Sr | 17:56 | 2:09 |
| Melinda Zhao | So | 16:26 | 1:43 |
| Samuel Heinonen | So | 13:56 | 1:21 |
| Riu Yamada | So | 13:05 | 1:07 |
| Kento Murase | Jr | 13:15 | 1:06 |
| Tarun Gandhi | So | 13:18 | 1:05 |
| Ethan Yang | Sr | 14:09 | 0:51 |
| Ritik Shenoy | So | 14:25 | 0:50 |
| Aiden White | So | 15:17 | 0:40 |
| Jonah Chang | Jr | 15:50 | 0:40 |
| Medha Rustagi | So | 19:49 | 0:40 |
| Yibo Wang | So | 16:30 | 0:39 |
| Abhi Kotari | Sr | 18:19 | 0:37 |
| Ashwanth Sundaramoorthi | So | 14:15 | 0:23 |
| Constantine Chua | So | 13:55 | 0:20 |
| Naomi Hsu | Jr | 16:41 | 0:12 |
| Brandon Wang | Sr | 16:20 | 0:08 |
| Vikram Mallya | So | 17:43 | 0:06 |
I also want to say thank you, thank you to everyone who supported their teammates, by cheering, or coming to the start line to say good luck and collect their warm ups, or in any other way. I was crossing from the start line to the finish area during the last race of the morning and I ran into Fahad and Jimin hanging out in one of the quietest, loneliest sections of the course behind the baseball diamond–they were there to be able to cheer where athletes could really use some inspiration. Seeing the two of those boys there made me incredibly happy and proud, and I am smiling as I type this sentence.
And a huge thank you to the parents who helped organize the beach party afterwards! I think that it was Oliver’s parents who were up front but many others were involved too. I think there are many, many kids who were happy for an afternoon on the beach with friends and pizza–and we will beat the team from Hughson in volleyball next year once we get Naomi and a few other ringers to stick around!
Compete results for Artichoke are posted on XCStats.
I hope you’re all proud of the effort you put into Artichoke and the hard work you’ve invested throughout this season. We should take pride in where we are right now—while also staying motivated to make the next month truly count. It’s always valuable to look at the athletes who finished ahead of us and think about what we want to accomplish in the coming year. You might say to yourself, “If I can improve by 15 seconds per mile, I could compete for a spot among the top 10 varsity runners at Artichoke 2026,” or “If each of my teammates and I can drop 30 seconds, we could be in the running for a team award.”
Those kinds of goals are powerful. It’s important to set these goals for ourselves—and to be ready to grind for the next rungs on the ladder. But at the same time, every one of us can look back and see a number of athletes who wish they were in our position today. Each of you ran a time that would be someone else’s personal record. They’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.
That doesn’t mean we should just say, “Cool, I’m great,” and stop pushing ourselves. But it does mean we can keep some perspective: your worst day might be someone else’s personal record. With that mental grounding, you can look ahead with a calm and steady heart. We can balance pride and drive. Know that you want to improve—but also recognize that you’re already pretty remarkable right now. You are an MVXC athlete.
