Make it a Dozen!

A dozen is such a nice number.  A dozen donuts.  A dozen roses.  A dozen trips to the Central Coast Section Cross Country Championships!

At the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League championships on November 1, 2022, both the girls’ and the boys’ varsity cross country teams earned starting boxes at CCS–yet let’s start at the beginning.  

The day started with the Junior Varsity girls*.  At 1:50pm, the gun was fired for the first race of the day.  Madi Polidoro went out hard but smart and was in a good position at the top of the hill after the first loop…Madi kept pushing along, and brought home Monta Vista’s first medal of the day with a 22:55 mark!  This was a whopping 1:43 minute personal record at Crystal Springs for Madi, and was good for fourth place.  Katie Lee was not far behind, holding off a hard charging Los Gatos girl for 7th.   Katie Li, Lilia Murase and Siran Gao finished in order–17, 18, 19–to wrap up the scoring as the MVXC girls took second place in the junior varsity division.  Katie’s 27:05 was a 64 second improvement from a month ago at Crystal!   Navya Parvathaneni added a 74 second PR, while Juliana Banes improved by two minutes–big improvements from so many of our young runners!  The MVXC junior varsity team finished in second place to Los Gatos in the De Anza League junior varsity division.

Ruhaan Shah lead the frosh-soph boys, running an 18:19 mark that gave the sophomore runner 7th place in a fast race.  Ruhaan’s run was another big Crystal PR–35 seconds!  Soham Beesetti was next, with a 19:33 for 25th place, and Darren Lin followed with a 20:15.  Freshman Rishi Salvi’s 20:50 was a monster PR–a drop of almost three minutes from a month before at the Crystal Preview race!–and Andrew Liu dropped even more with a 4 minute improvement.  Ethan Yang’s 87 second PR is also outstanding.  Raj Thapyilal, Andrew Liu, Jay Zhang and Advaith Anand all had PRs also–this group has really been working hard and finished the season on a roll!  The boys finished in fifth place as a team.

The varsity girls toed the line determined to continue the chain of MVXC CCS qualifying teams that began in 2011.  The girls seemed to have a monopoly on the number four, as senior Captain Nikhita Saldi’s very fast 19:32 brought home yet another fourth place medal.  Sophomore Anika Bhandarkar went under 21 minutes at Crystal for the first time, adding an 11th place finish to MVXC’s medals collection.  Seniors Sydney Stevens and Avani Kalari made their last races count as they chipped in with 17th and 23rd place finishes; Valerie Ayzenberg’s 20 second PR was good for 24th place.  Megan Nieh’s 22:12 was a 39 second PR for 27th, while the varsity team’s 7th runner, Nerea Northrop, finished in 29th out of 59 runners.  The team finished in 2nd place, qualifying the group for CCS in 10 days!

The boys went in to SCVALs knowing that they would need to race well to advance, and they all responded to the challenge.  Denny Dong took yet another fourth place medal for MVXC, almost cracking the 16 minute barrier with a 29 second personal record.  Tanay Parikh needed a personal record to get an 11th place medal–so, oddly, the varsity boys and girls top 2 runners both finished 4-11 in their races!  Spooky.  Ravi Polisetti was the second freshman to finish in the entire league.  Ravi also was a recipient of a Bob Rush Sportsmanship Award–congrats, Ravi, always keep that spirit!  Seniors Gene Zhou and Ari Rajaram came in bang-bang 28-29 to complete the scoring for MV, and William Wu chipped in with a 40th place finish as the boys’ team took fourth place and punched their ticket to CCS!

Denny and Tanay’s marks are both in the top 25 all-time for Monta Vista boys at Crystal Springs–Denny is now 8th, and Tanay 25th.  Ravi’s mark is number 10 all-time for Monta Vista freshmen.  All three are coming back next year, along with Ruhaan, Soham, Darren, William…in all, ten of the boys’ top 12 finishers will be back next year.  The 2022 season saw these boys get to CCS…looking ahead, the sky is the limit.

During the day, out of 40 MVXC runners, 23 starters set new personal records.  In addition to these PRs, Sydney Stevens, Joey Suresh, Nikhita Saldi, Jasmine Varma, Ari Rajaram, Ethan Lam, and Aaron Lee improved their time from the Crystal Preview race one month prior, and Avani Kalari and Darren Lin improved from the SCVAL championships in 2021.  

Personal Records Set by MVXC at Crystal

November 1, 2022

Complete results are posted on XCStats, and Mr. Slaney posted over 800 excellent photos.  Malcolm Slaney’s photos are featured prominently in this post.

The 2022 MCVX awards banquet is coming up on November 15!  Mark your calendar and don’t forget to RSVP!

*For Coach Flatow, the day started much earlier.  Coach has been the SCVAL championship meet director for the last decade, and he was at the course before anyone else.  Job One was to set up Monta Vista’s camp, before starting to do the preparation for the cross country races.  The camp looked beautiful with the MVXC tents looking over the course, like a castle above the kingdom.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, some weather moved in–a couple hours of fierce rain and wind.  The first big gust of wind turned the tents into aluminum and canvas pretzels!  In the midst of the rain, Coach had to try to MacGyver the tents back into some kind of shelter for the team before the athletes arrived.  Simultaneously, many of the other coaches were texting Coach, apparently thinking he was Accuweather, asking him what the weather was like, was the meet going to happen on schedule, would this impact the times that athletes would run, what were the options for rescheduling….aaaaargh!  What a morning.

Happy Coach at 9:54am…First one on the course, camp is set up and awaiting MVXC!

Foreshadowing…is that a tornado behind Coach?

Oh no.  (11:01 am)

MacGyvered back together, sort of.  Sigh.

1:59pm…First race–De Anza junior varsity girls–is on the course.  Sun is out again.  Whew! 

6:02pm–Last one off the course, after a great day of racing!