League Season Opens at Central Park

Monta Vista Cross-Country opened the SCVAL league season at the Central Park Invitational on September 28.  In six races, the Monta Vista teams finished no lower than 7th out of 14 schools in the league, with second place finishes in the Varsity Girls and the Boys Frosh-Soph divisions.

Coach Flatow asked several of the teams to try different team-racing strategies, which pushed many of the runners outside their usual running patterns and created some challenges for the team.  We plan on these experiments becoming valuable later in the season, but these tactics certainly effected some of the times posted.   Nonetheless, individual standout performances abounded.  Emilio Torres-Gonzalez and Takuto Doshiro finished 1-3 in the frosh-soph boys race, with Takuto throwing in a 5 minute mile late in the race.  The varsity girls placed three girls in the top 10 finishers–Jenny Xu, Bridget Gottleib and Kirsten Do.  Kevin Bishop ran from back in the pack after a half mile, and moved up like a shark through the pack to finish 6th in the varsity boys race, while Nishant Greene finished 9th in the varsity-3 boys race.

Overall, five runners posted times that make the Monta Vista top-10 all time:  Kevin Bishop (fastest MV boys time ever at Central Park), Emilio, Jenny (fastest MV girls time ever), Bridget and Kirsten are all on the top-10 lists.  Think about that–25% of the times on Monta Vista’s all-time Central Park list were replaced yesterday!

It was a great day for the team, and when we woke up in the morning, we could pick up the Mercury-News and find a great article about our own Pearl Law, as well as the CCS rankings with girls (14th) and boys (13th) both ranked in the top 15 of our section!

Congratulations, everyone, on a fabulous day!

Complete Central Park Invitational results:

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

Monta Vista Central Park Invitational Times: