After twelve weeks of daily practice, training, mileage, and hard work…the starter yells ‘ready!’ and the gun goes off, and all of a sudden we realize that in about 20 minutes, give or take, the season is over. Wow…what a sensation.
On Saturday, November 10, the Monta Vista boys and girls competed in the Central Coast Section Championships. For the second straight year, both boys and girls qualified for the Division 1 championship race, and both teams ran races they should be proud of.
Of the 14 runners who got on the starting line, ten earned personal records on the three mile long Toro Park race course—an impressive 71% of our runners. There were some particularly impressive stories, including:
- Junior Zach Patti ran a 16:50 PR. As a freshman, he ran a 20:02; as a sophomore, 19:20; earlier this year, he ran 17:56 at Earlybird—so Saturday’s race was a 66 second PR and his 4th consecutive PR on the Toro Park course!
- Sophomore Julia Chang also kept a string of PRs intact. Julia ran a 22:53 last year, a 20:33 at Earlybird, and finished in 19:42 at CCS. That’s an improvement of more than three minutes in just over a year!
- Sophomore Rohan Choudhury pushed through a rough day for him, and still had a 39 second PR with his 17:18!
- Sophomore Chloe Li also had a big PR, with a 21:35 that was three minutes faster than her freshman time at Toro!
- Captain Bridget Gottlieb also recorded a PR at Toro, to go with recent PRs at Crystal and Mt. SAC, as did Captain Anand Rao, Anna Hsiao, John Hsiao, Steven Lim, Captain Ajay Rajamani and Brent Mogensen.
As teams, the girls finished 6th in Division 1 and 11th overall in the 130 team section, while the boys finished 10th in D1 and 28th in section. The girls’ D1 race was extremely close, with only 50 points separating Monta Vista from the winning Salinas team. I think that in any other division, we would have moved on to State. I also believe that if we had not had the flu or cold or whatever it was whip through several members of our girls’ team, our good results might have been even more spectacular in the ultra-competitive D1 competition. But what is more important is that our teams never said a word about that, our runners simply went out and competed with hearts like lions! Your coaches are very, very proud of you all and your results on Saturday!
Looking forward to next year will be mostly saved for a later post. However, think about this…while we sadly bid farewell to senior Ajay, who ran his last XC race for MV, 13 of the 14 runners from Saturday are returning next year! That is something to look forward to…it does not take a genius to extrapolate to 2013. More on 2013 later!
But for now…congratulations to everyone who worked hard to improve and to achieve this year. We will see you at the banquet to celebrate! Thanks everyone!
(Sorry this took a day to get out…Coach Johnson can let you know all that has been going on this weekend that caused a little delay in this post.)
Complete meet results are available on the Lynbrook Sports website.
Monta Vista results are as follows:
CCS Overall Results–Girls
11. 462 MONTA VISTA ( 20:11 avg 1:40:53 total 1:53 spread)
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1 33 JENNY XU 19:25 So
2 54 JULIA CHANG 19:42 So
3 69 BRIDGET GOTTLIEB 19:55 Jr
4 116 MADELEINE YIP 20:33 Fr
5 190 ANNA HSIAO 21:18 Fr
6 (218) CHLOE LI 21:35 So
7 (297) KIRSTEN DO 22:23 Jr
CCS Overall Results–Boys
28. 792 MONTA VISTA ( 17:20 avg 1:26:37 total 1:01 spread)
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1 86 ZACHARY PATTI 16:50 Jr
2 147 BRENT MOGENSEN 17:18 Fr
3 150 ROHAN CHOUDHURY 17:18 So
4 155 AJAY RAJAMANI 17:20 Sr
5 254 STEVEN LIM 17:51 Jr
6 (267) JOHN HSIAO 17:57 Jr
7 (292) ANAND RAO 18:06 Jr
