For the first time in memory, the SCVAL season opened with a 5km race on the Baylands Park course. In the past, the league season would open with a shorter course–this year we have stepped right up to a 5km.
Only three days after a good Pacific Tiger race in Stockton, it was not clear what MVXC would bring to Baylands. In addition, on Tuesday September 24, the team faced the beginning of a mini-heat wave–conditions were not ideal. The combination showed in the times, as the runners that were entered in 5km races at Pacific and the 5km at Baylands seemed to have about 45 second slower times. Nevertheless, some athletes broke that trend; Nitin Subramanian, Triya Roy and Rachel Jiang had about half that amount of drop in time. And some of the runners who ran two miles at Pacific and stepped up to a 5km at Baylands handled the challenge well; Agnes Wang, Aditi Dixit, Alex Richardson, Sotirios Kougouris, Jonathan Huang, John McNelis and Andrew Chen all had per mile paces within 20 seconds or so of their pace at two miles, even when stepping up to the 5km distance on a hot day!
And here is the thing–the teams did great! With Sylvana Northrop, Triya and Jannah Sheriff leading the way with top-15 finishes, the varsity girls took second place in our 14 team league; sophomore Vivian Lau was our fourth scorer and freshman Avani Kalari, running in her first varsity race, completed the scoring for MVXC. The boys took home third place bragging rights as Rohun, Andrew Richardson, and Nitin Subramanian were the top three. Pranav Reddy had an outstanding race as (I think) he was the only runner to have a faster time at Baylands than at Pacific! Sophomore Sahil Goel completed the varsity scoring with fellow sophomore Justin Yu right behind him.
Even given the unfavorable conditions, MVXC runners recorded a number of personal records:
Baylands Course Personal Records
September 24, 2019
Triya Roy 20:27 61 second PR
Steve Ho 22:00 60
Rohun Agrawal 17:58 56
Upasana Dilip 23:15 36
Andrew Richardson 17:55 24
Vivian Cheng 23:57 18
Vivian Lau 22:00 16
Pranav Reddy 18:37 10
Tyler Liu 19:54 9
Sylvana Northrop 19:29 5
SCVAL is a tough, competitive league, sending teams to State every year representing both boys and girls, in D1 and D2. Having both boys and girls teams finish in the top three is a big early season statement! The region is recognizing that MVXC19 is for real, as both boys and girls were ranked in the first CCS cross country poll of the season.
Complete results are available on XCStats.
Photos will be available shortly from Mr. Ma (thank goodness we don’t have to put up with Coach Flatow’s photos this week! Mr. Ma is a wonderful XC photographer and we are so grateful when he is out taking photographs of our team.
MVXC gets a couple weeks of focussed practice before return to action, with the Crystal Preview race at historic Crystal Springs on October 8. Then on October 12, about half the team will be making the trek to Fresno California for the Clovis Invitational, facing off against state meet contenders from across California in a preview of the State Championship course.
