Running Fast at Artichoke

With the upperclassmen focused on SATs, Monta Vista freshmen and sophomores stole the show at the Artichoke Invitational last Saturday.

The Frosh-Soph girls started the day off with dazzling performances.  Jenny Xu, Kirsten Do and Bridget Gottleib went 1-5-6 (out of 122 runners!) to lead the girls to a 2nd place finish in the large school division.  Jenny ran a very smart race, easily running with the Willow Glen girl who set the early pace for the first part of the course; as the WG runner tired and slowed just a little, Jenny passed her and forced the pace the rest of the way.  Bridget and Kirsten worked together the entire race, running confidently and well together, easily working their way through the pack as a team.  Julia Chang also medalled for the girls’ team.

Not to be outdone, the Frosh-Soph boys followed with a win in the large school frosh-soph race!  Takuto Doshiro and Emilio Torres-Gonzales finished 3-5, in an impressive sprint at the end with a Modesto runner that left everyone gasping.  Rohan Choudhury and Ryan Bishop also finished in the first 25 runners and Anand Rao completed the scoring of the frosh-soph meet champion team.  One of the impressive things about the frosh-soph boys team on Saturday is that they seemed to finish in pairs–showing that everyone was working with each other to fight for position and finish as high as possible.

Relative to the Central Park course where we raced earlier in the week, most boys found the Artichoke course to be 20-40 seconds longer, and the girls 50-70 seconds longer.  However, we found that there was a notable exception.  While finishing 4th in the Varsity-B boys race, Collin Marcroft was actually 1 second faster at Artichoke than at the Central Park Invite!  Whatever you ate for breakfast on Saturday, keep that up–and let us know your secret!  (Did we miss anyone else who ran faster at Artichoke than at Central?)

While many of the Monta Vista seniors and juniors had conflicts with SAT testing and either arrived at the last minute or missed the race entirely, the boys combined team still finished 9th overall on the day out of 50 teams (based on top 5 combined times).  The combined girls placed even higher, finishing 6th on the day (and only 1 minute out of 3rd place in a very competitive team competition!).  Pearl Law medalled in the Varsity girls race.  Congratulations, team, on a fabulous day of racing!

Thanks very much to coach/meet director Paul Farnsworth.  Coach Farnsworth and his Half Moon Bay team put on a great event!

Photos will be upon the website gallery shortly.

Results for MV are listed below, however there may be transcription errors; the complete official results are at this link:

http://www.dyestatcal.com/ATHLETICS/XC/2011/hmb_res.htm