For the ninth consecutive year, both the Monta Vista boys and girls travelled to compete in the Central Coast Section Championships on Saturday, November 16. CCS covers schools from San Francisco to Hollister, and is one of the most competitive areas anywhere–we have seen before that our region’s championship meets are comparable to State championship meetings in many parts of the United States! We rolled out of a foggy morning in the Silicon Valley to find that Crystal Springs was hanging above the fog in perfect weather, looking down at the mists below…beautiful!
The varsity girls came into the race missing their low stick from most of the season; after taking second place in the SCVAL championships last week, Sylvana Northrop was limping around saying ‘my ankle hurts a little’–it turned out she had a fracture. We can talk more about pain thresholds later, but that was pretty tough! Freshman Nikhita Saldi, fresh off of her SCVAL junior varsity championship winning race, toed the starting line as part of the Monta Vista varsity team on Saturday. This was quite a different group of girls than 2018. Last year the starting seven included four senior girls along with one junior, one sophomore and one freshman; this year the starters were one senior, three sophomores and three freshmen. This is a young team!
The team did not race as if they were just happy to be there–the girls went out to compete, and fought for every spot. At the two mile split, the girls were locked in a battle with Gunn for second place–and that’s where the teams finished, as Gunn edged out Monta Vista by a mere six points for the second podium spot. Monta Vista put three girls under the 20 minute mark at Crystal, as Triya Roy and sophomores Elisabeth Hsu and Jannah Sheriff all went under that significant milestone. Vivian Lau along with freshmen Avani Kalara and Nikhita just missed going under 20, coming in as a pack between 20:02 and 20:04; and Sydney Stevens rounded out the scoring with a solid 21:06. Sydney’s performance showed the depth of our young team as only one other team had a 7th runner that could match her finish, and the team as a whole had an excellent 32 second 1-6 spread. The MVXC future looks bright as our young group will continue to develop. Everyone should be proud of the way this group of young women set aside adversity to compete at such a high level!
We will be looking forwards to next year with confidence. We are graduating a four year varsity runner, Triya Roy, who has meant a lot to our team and will be a big loss–but MVXC20 is also going to be returning seven girls that have experience running in the CCS championships.
The boys were up right after the girls. This race featured a Bellarmine team that had been touted as one of the best teams ever in CCS, but Rohun Agrawal showed that he was not intimidated at all. He went out with the first pack and was breaking up the Bell runners right from the start. At the two mile split, Rohun was sitting in 7th place and he continued to work, passing one more Bell runner to take 6th place in D1 and end up on the podium! Rohun’s time stood up for 6th place all day as no other division winner was able to equal his mark; it will be interesting to see where he places when the all-CCS voting is recorded.
Senior Nitin Subramanian finished his fine high school cross country career with a personal record, as he was the next MVXC runner in with a 16:23 good for 22nd place. Sophomore Justin Yu had one of his best races of the season with a 16:40 PR; he was followed closely by Andrew Richardson at 16:42. Sophomore Sahil Goel finished the Monta Vista scoring with a 16:54 and a fifth runner under 17, with fellow sophomore Matthew Sun not far behind. Senior Kyle Tsujimoto showed his grit and determination with a nice bounce-back race, knocking more than a minute off his time at SCVAL. Kyle and his fellow senior Nitin had a big impact on the MVXC team, with four years of strong leadership by example–they have been a hard working and determined pair for their entire MVXC careers, and they have made a real difference to MVXC and our team culture.
Saturday is quite a day to think about. On the one hand, a 3-5 day is an excellent result that all of us can be proud of! On the other hand, we can see how we might have able to move up just a little bit more. This is the challenge of gritty, driving people…as Angela Duckworth says, high performers are always trying to be better. Grit paragons tend to be satisfied with being dissatisfied.
Many of us walked away wishing we had finished a little bit further up. That’s fine, that feeling shows that we care and want to improve. However, it’s also OK to look back at all the people that finished behind you and all the teams that finished behind us. Not just the people who finished behind you in that race, but also all the people that did not even qualify for the CCS championships…all the people that started a cross country season and did not even finish or did not even try. Think of all the teams and people that would change places with you and with us. Your worst day is someone else’s PR day. After you have thought about all that…then turn forward again and think about the runners you want to catch and the goals you want to work towards. And let’s work towards those goals with total grit and commitment, with the humility that comes with knowing that the journey will be challenging and the goals are not guaranteed, and the confidence that comes with keeping in mind how far we have already come.
Complete results at XCStats.
