Earlybird 2012

Frosh boys’ team running striders before their first race.

Racing is the best.  Even on a hot, dusty day in Salinas, racing is the best.  Every day is a great day to race!

And the first race of the season is always special!

Monta Vista Cross Country opened our season at the 19^th Annual Earlybird Invitational, on the classic 3-mile Toro Park course.  We had a great start to the season, and even if the day was not perfect for our team, we are off and running and well positioned for a season of success.

The unquestioned highlight of the day was the overall performance of the girls’ team!  MVXC’s top five girls (Jenny Xu, who won the sophomore race, Maddie Yip, Julia Chang, Captain Bridget Gottlieb, and Anna Hsiao) was the 3^rd team overall out of 70 teams and 2,500 runners at the race!  Our girls are really rolling.  The only teams in front of the MV ladies were traditional CCS powers SLV and San Benito.  It was truly an exceptional performance by the MV women!  And not only our top 5.  Several other MV runners were close behind (Chloe Li, Sameera Vemulapalli and newcomers Isabel La Plain, Namrata Subramanian, and Valerie Lo), three more possible contributors sitting out because of injuries (Kirsten Do, Erin Luks and Sanjna Bharadwaj), and several more girls who are rapidly improving.  This was a great first step for a group of women who are heading towards a very special year as a team!

Soph girls get rolling.

The boys showed that their success is going to be driven by their ability to move the pack, as Monta Vista’s top 10 runners finished within 66 seconds of each other!  That narrow range is great for training and great for scoring against teams with weak 5^th runners, so the challenge for the boys is to work together to increase the group’s average pace.  It’s totally possible and could lead to successful team results!  The top ten MV boys times were run by seniors Steven Ting, Bumpei Maeda and Captain Ajay Rajamani, Juniors Zach Patti, John Hsaio, Steven Lim and Captain Anand Rao, Sophomores Rohan Choudhury and Emilio Torres-Gonzalez, and Freshman Brent Mogensen, who ran the fastest MV time of the day on his way to medaling in the Freshmen boys’ race!

The day was hot, and the heat was reflected in the results.  I had been a little bit surprised that we did not see more MV PRs, but this seemed to be a meet-wide phenomenon.  A quick review of overall 2012 meet results compared to the prior year showed that there was a significant drop in the very best times for every team, as compared to the 2011 results.  There were about 40% fewer runners who achieved sub-16 minutes for boys and sub-19 minutes for girls this year.  Therefore, a 2012 Earlybird PR is a real achievement!  The biggest PRs recorded by MV runners were recorded by John Hsaio (a 2:08 PR), Tharun Sankar (2:12), Julia Chang (2:20), and Chloe Li (2:23).  Congratulations!

And lastly…this note would not be complete without recognizing the big group of recent MV graduates who came back and ran in the unofficial alumni race before the meet began.  Michael Lu, Arvind Rao, Ben Chang, Nandini Chitale, Pearl Law and Neha Jammu all came out, ran, and supported the MV runners.  This was by far the biggest group of alumni runners of any school, and having six runners come back and be involved in the team for fun tells the story of how much our runners value their time on the MVXC team!

Nice job, MVXC12!  This is a great start to a memorable season.

Note on photos:  Many of you noticed that Coach Flatow’s friend, Ezra, was at Earlybird taking photographs.  And many of you know what that means!—there are great photographs on the way, suitable for your desktop and showing off for your friends—Ezra can make us look like we are models for a Nike advertisement!  However, Ezra takes some time to process your photos…so keep your eyes open for images from Earlybird.  In the meantime, here are a few taken by Coach and parents.

Complete meet results at: Earlybird

Monta Vista Runners Results

Boys

Junior boys.

 Girls

Maddie.

Alumni medalists in the open race get a big hug from Coach Johnson and Jenny Xu. 

Pasta feed.