On Saturday, September 8, Monta Vista Cross Country travelled to Toro Park in Salinas to open the 2018 season at the Chieftain-Spirit Invitational.
The team usually opens the season at Toro at Earlybird. Toro Park is a classic course: 3.0 miles long, mostly dirt, good for spectators, some nice changes in terrain and a couple tough hills. Every other year, Toro is the site of the section championships. However, since Earlybird is not so early anymore, we decided to take a run at Chieftain. Chieftain was a nice opener for our squad!
First up were the frosh-soph girls. This was the first high school cross country race for nine of the fifteen Monta Vista starters, yet that was hard to tell from the way that the girls took command of the race from the start. Freshman Jannah Sheriff (who may have set a course record at the seldom-run 3.2 mile distance) lead the girls in with a second place finish, with freshman Ellie Hsu, sophomore Rachel Jiang, freshman Vivian Lau, and sophomore Vivian Cheng all joining Jannah in the top ten. With five medalists and a one-five time gap of only 1:12, the team outcome was hardly in doubt. The Monta Vista frosh-soph girls won the team championship, scoring 20 points while second place Presentation came in with 73. (Standard cross country team competition has seven athletes competing for each team. The places of the top five runners are added up, with the lowest score winning. The sixth and seventh runners ‘displace’, meaning that if the sixth and seventh runners can finish in front of a scoring runner from an opposing team, additional points are added to the other team. Runners from incomplete teams are eliminated from scoring. Ties are broken based on the finish of the sixth runners. There are some variations to the system, but this is the most common approach.)
The frosh-soph boys kept MVXC momentum going, with sophomores Rohun Agrawal and Andrew Richardson engaging in some tough racing up front to finish 1-3 in the next race. Freshmen Sahil Goel, Justin Yu and Matthew Sun finished in the second ten with less than 20 seconds between them to give Monta Vista our second championship plaque in two races.
Both JV boys and JV girls had solid races. Seniors Ryan Niu and Darren Yang paced the JV boys to a 6th place finish. Due to some injuries and absences the girls did not have a complete team, however our four girls had solid performances, with Ria Kolli finishing 16th for the ladies.
The Varsity girls got their season rolling, with sophomore Sylvana Northrop and Junior Triya Roy both finishing in the top ten. Together with seniors Sarah Feng, Serena Geis and Claire Chang the girls took a tough second place in the Varsity race, only ten points shy of champion Presentation High. The boys’ varsity team started only one runner from the group that represented Monta Vista at the 2017 section championships last November here at Toro, so clearly we have some work to do. Nonetheless, the boys finished a solid seventh in their race with Kyle Tsujimoto and Nitin Subramanian leading the way.
This was an excellent day for MVXC. Our veteran leaders are building towards in-season form, some returning runners have shown that they have done a lot of work over the summer and are demonstrating big improvements, and our rookie runners are proving to be excellent additions to MVXC–both in terms of performance and also team spirit. We are off to a great start!
Any time you leave a competition with a lot of hardware, we should be happy. And we left Chieftain with three plaques and nine medals, so we do feel pretty good! Also, this week there were nine athletes that had PRs of more than a minute at Toro Park. There are many ways for runners to ‘win’ a race, and a runner does not have to finish first to win. MVXC will value improvements just as much as we value where athletes finish in a race. Improving by a minute at Toro–more than 20 seconds per mile!–is a big personal win.
Monta Vista Personal Records Set at Toro Park
Chieftain-Spirit Invitational, September 8 2018
Pranav Reddy 2:43
Vivian Cheng 2:13
Karthik Guruvayurappan 2:09
Ananya Rajagopal 1:57
Rohun Agrawal 1:51
Conner Hsu 1:22
Andrew Richardson 1:14
Rachel Jiang 1:13
Tyler Liu 1:02
Brian Xu 0:53
Ria Kolli 0:42
Claire Lin 0:28
Timothy Wu 0:21
Siddhant Patel 0:13
Complete results are available on the XCStats web site.
The next race will be at the University of the Pacific in two weeks, when Monta Vista travels to compete in the Pacific Tiger Invitational. Athletes who want to travel by bus may purchase a ticket; instructions on how to purchase a ticket are on-line. Athletes choosing not to purchase a bus ticket will need to arrange their own transportation to the race in Stockton.
Fine work, everyone! We are off and rolling on another adventure together. You are truly off to a great start!
Consoling a competitor after a race is an excellent display of sportsmanship.
