Monta Vista cross country made a trek to Vacaville for the Lagoon Valley Classic on September 5, opening the 2021 our first *real* cross country meet in two years and the first high school meet ever for many of our athletes! The Lagoon Valley course is a classic California course–dirt trails, some serious hills, and dustyyyy.
The frosh-soph girls lead off our season with real flair. After a rousing cheer, the ladies launched on the two mile course–with two impressive hills, Big Momma and Little Sister. None of the girls had raced this course, or anything really like it, before. Sophomore Ryland Adzich moved to the front right from the starting gun and hung in there with the top runners, finishing in 7th place for the first medal earned by MVXC this season. Ryland’s 14:39 (7:20 per mile) place was outstanding on this challenging course. Following Ryland was a pack of purple, as sophomores Megan Nieh, Valerie Ayzenberg, Sandhya Fastnacht and freshman Anika Bhandakar crossed the finish line within a half minute of each other, from 16:09 to 16:46, with only 14 place between them, from 57th to 71st place–out of 228 runners! This performance by the MVXC top five was good for 7th place in the meet, out of 4o girls’ teams in the two mile race. After the race, the girls could be seen all around the course cheering for their teammates…Manasi Prasad climbed every hill a second time so that every one of her teammate could hear a friendly voice when they crested Big Momma or Little Sister! What a great start for our young women,
Freshman Tanay Parikh ran the first race of his high school career and recorded a 13:55 (6:58 per mile) mark on the two mile course, good for 60th place out of 212 boys. Tanay was closely followed by sophomores Brandon Xu and Ethan Lu. Ethan gets a huge shout out; like team captain Soti Kourgiouris, is a hurdler during track season. Not every sprinter-hurdler will come out and really push themselves during the cross season, but those that do tend to be some of our best athletes are often some of our grittiest. Ruhaan Shah and Neil Jain completed the scoring as the boys team finished 12th.
The varsity races at Lagoon Valley are a challenging three miles long, and teams are allowed to enter up to ten athletes. The varsity girls saw athletes establish themselves up front and stick there, with junior Nikhita Saldi continuing to build on a strong track season with an 18:48 mark which was the seventh best girls’ mark all day out of 247 girls. Nikhita’s time is the fastest every for a Monta Vista girl on the Lagoon Valley course, almost 30 seconds faster than Sylvana Northrop’s time two years ago! Two other Monta Vista girls earned varsity medals, Jannah Sheriff in 24th place and Vivian Lau in 38th. Together with Elizabeth Hsu and Sydney Stevens, the top five varsity girls earned a 6th place team finish — only 31 points from second place overall in a tightly packed competition! That was a strong season opener for the MVXC girls’ team. The varsity boys were lead by senior Justin Yu, who continued to demonstrate that a strong summer of running will pay off as he ran a 16:55 that was good for a 16th place medal! Justin looks strong as our season starts. Ari Rajaram, Andrew Cole, sophomore Denny Dong and Matthew Sun completed the varsity scoring as the boys’ team took 11th overall (an agonizing one point from being in the top ten!).
As the day warmed, the JV boys’ and girls’ races saw more medals earned by Avani Kalari, Nerea Northrop and Meena Kolli, bringing the total Monta Vista hardware haul to eight!
Ten athletes were running the same course again, and five of these athletes set personal records. Justin cut 55 seconds off his time from two years ago; again, this PR was earned through a lot of miles that Justin ran this past summer. While not a course PR, Soti’s mark of 20:30 was two and a half minutes faster than the first three-mile race he ran as a freshman at Toro Park…that’s a big leap and shows how sticking with something over time can pay off with big improvements. For the girls, Jannah and Vivian’s marks were two second PRs from the start of their sophomore seasons–and those seasons ended with both of them finishing high in the Central Coast Section Finals. Those are good PRs! Meena Kolli’s hard work lead to a minute and 20 second PR–forty seconds per mile!–while Insiah Kizilbash continues to show the remarkable improvement that is possible for those that will work hard as she had a twelve minute PR.
Complete results have been posted on XCstats. Agnes Wang has posted some great photos, too.
Thank you to the Saldi’s for hosting pasta night before our race day!
The next race for MVXC will be Saturday, September in in Concord at the De La Salle-Nike Invitational…we have a couple weeks to put in some work to prepare! Like Lagoon Valley, there is a two mile and a three mile course at DLS. Varsity will run the three mile course, however the frosh-soph and JV runners have an option of entering either two or three mile races. Coach intends to enter most of the team in the three mile race–this is a more standard cross country challenge! If you have a preference to not run three miles, you should see coach soon.
Well done in Vacaville, team! See you all at practice!
