SCVAL Championships; MVXC Rolls On!

Monta Vista runners put on a strong showing at the SCVAL Championships on October 30, and the team made their main goal of advancing both boys and girls to the CCS Championships for the eighth consecutive year!

First up were the JV girls, and MVXC put on a real show.  Anyone fortunate enough to be watching Freshman Ellie Hsu’s finish saw an incredible battle as Ellie and a Homestead runner were running stride for stride for the last 200m…while Ellie finished a mere step behind first place, that was an truly gutsy battle by our athlete.  This finish was a great, great effort.  Ellie led a front pack of MV runners, as Vivian Lau and Rachel Jiang were the next two athletes across the line in 3rd and 4th places overall.  Monta Vista ended up with an agonizing second place, only two points out of first.  We will get it next season!

The MV Frosh-Soph boys were up next.  This group was a little depleted as two sophomores and two freshmen were pulled up to varsity, yet they fought hard.  Freshman Matthew Sun was our first runner in with a nice 18:08 for 11th place, and Jason Yip was only 30 seconds behind for 20th place.  Sophomore Pranav Reddy completed a strong season that showed a lot of year-to-yeaer improvement with a 22nd place finish and a 2:10 improvement over his freshman year.  Siddhant Patel and Andrew Cole completed the scoring for the boys and gave MV a third place finish.  This is an extremely strong result; if we had loaded up this race with all our freshmen and sophomores we would have been right in the mix for first.  Our young MV boys are working hard and the future looks very bright!

The Varsity girls took care of business, holding off a game Los Gatos team by one point for Monta Vista’s third league championship in the last six years.  After three LG girls crossed the finish, MV answered with three of our own as Sylvana Northrop, Triya Roy and Jannah Sheriff came in within three seconds of each other, 4-5-6.  Sarah Feng and Sanjana Borle completed the Monta Vista scoring in 13th and 16th.   Claire Chang chipped in by finishing two spots in front of the fifth LG runner, adding one point to the LG score, breaking the tie and giving Monta Vista the win.  By winning the league championship, Monta Vista moves on to the Central Coast Section Championships on November 10.

Finally, the Monta Vista Varsity boys punched their ticket to the CCS Championships with a fourth place finish.  In another spectacular finish, sophomore Rohun Agrawal found himself locked in a battle with a Lynbrook junior.  For the last 200m it appeared that first one, then the other, would prevail.  Finally, when it looked like the Viking would hold off Rohun, a final burst gave Rohun a narrow win–the two runners were scored with the same time!  This was another fun finish to watch if you happened to be lucky enough to be within eyeshot of the finish.  Another sophomore, Andrew Richardson, was our second athlete across the line, taking home 15th place and the last all-league position.  Monta Vista’s next two runners were freshmen Justin Yu and Sahil Goel (this is a very young varsity team!), and junior Kyle Tsujimoto gave MV our final scorer in 33rd place.  Monta Vista took home fourth place overall and the last qualifying spot for CCS; the boys were also only one point from third place and five points from second place.  With such a young team, MVXC is in a great position to start an exceptional period of MV running!

Having both the boys’ and the girls’ teams qualify for the CCS championships for the eighth year in a row is an impressive achievement, a testament not only to the work this team has done, but also an statement about how hard each group of kids has worked to establish a gritty culture and pass on a strong worth ethic to all the new athletes that join the team.

Ria Kolli and Jason Yip were both awarded league-wide Bob Rush Sportsmanship Medals, a real honor.  Ria was honored for thanking all the officials after the race–that is always an exceptional idea!

Individually, Monta Vista had 10 all-league honorees, and a big list of personal records, all listed below.

Complete results are at XCStats.  Mr. Ma put up a lot of great photos!  Mr Slaney (Palo Alto) posted some more.

Come support our boys and girls at the CCS Championships on November 10.  Our boys start at 2:40pm and the girls compete at 3:15.

Varsity All-League

Sylvana Northrop (2)

Triya Roy (2)

Jannah Sheriff

Sarah Feng (4)

Rohun Agrawal

Andrew Richardson

Junior Varsity/FS All-League

Ellie Hsu

Vivian Lau

Rachel Jiang (2)

Ananya Rajagopal

Girls’ Individual Personal Records

Boys’ Individual Personal Records