MVXC Powers Through Crystal and Clovis!

Week 9 of the Monta Vista cross country season was filled with exceptional performances as the team competed on two of the iconic cross country courses in all of California–Crystal Springs and Woodward Park.  It is truly a privilege for our athletes to be able to compete in these great venues!

Clovis Invitational

Thirty-four MV athletes piled in our bus and rolled down to Fresno for the Clovis Invitational on Friday, October 11.  After some unexpected holiday traffic hassles and some cafeteria issues, the team got settled in our hotel and went to sleep with visions of cross country glory.

The Clovis Invitational is quite a high level meet.  Many of the top teams from across California come to the Clovis Invite because the meet is held on the same meet as the State Championships; teams with aspirations for success at State will come to Clovis for a chance to compete on the same course.  This situation makes Clovis a Pre-State meet, and the level of competition is elite.

First on the line were the Monta Vista varsity girls.  Monta Vista lined up a group of experienced veterans that know their way around a big race, and they set the tone with some excellent strategy and grit.  The Woodward Park course rewards effort in the back part of the course.  Sylvana Northrop and Triya Roy went out with matching 5:54 first miles that put them in 25th and 26th place, and they keep pushing through the race to record excellent 18:44/19:02 marks that earned them 5th and 11th place out of 211 finishers!  Their marks place Sylvana and Triya 3rd and 5th on Monta Vista’s all-time list at Woodward Park.  Vivian Lau and Ellie Hsu were the MVXC roadkill leaders on the day, as they also went out with matching first miles of 6:37 and proceeded to pass 95 and 85 runners respectively.  Together with Jannah Sheriff, the Monta Vista scoring top five passed a net total 208 runners to move from 16th team place at the mile mark to a fine fifth place team finish (out of 32 teams)!

The varsity boys followed up with a stellar race of their own.   Junior Rohan Agrawal ran a race with a recognizable MVXC strategy, opening with a 4:59 mile and 38th place at one mile and finishing in 1oth place and a 16:01 clocking (2nd MV all-time!) and a 44 second PR.  Andrew Richardson followed with a 16:30/34th out of 242 finishers, sophomore Sahil Goel added a 17-flat mark good for 66th, and senior captains Nitin Subramanian and Kyle Tsujimoto with 17:03 and 17:28 to finish our scoring and take the 8th place team slot out of 35 teams.  

Rohan, Andrew, Sahil, Nitin, Kyle and also Pranav Reddy all recorded Woodward Park PRs in the varsity boys’ race.  Having six varsity runners PR in the same race is remarkable, but it’s not surprising to everyone watching the boys at practice this season.  A group of up to ten boys consistently puts in a couple extra laps of warmup before leaving the school, and proceeds to accelerate out on McClellan to start their run.  The boys have been working steadily as a group, challenging and encouraging each other, pushing their conversational and threshold paces, adding miles where appropriate, and being smart about core work and recovery.  Their teamwork has been inspiring–they consistently work together as a group.  Each boy seems to take it upon himself to try to stay with the group and run together every practice, and the group encourages the individual.  It’s a great group to watch, and their success is so well deserved.

Conner Hsu led the JV boys with an 18:56, a 24 second PR and 49 runners passed after mile one (creating what I guess is an all-time brother-sister combined single-day roadkill record of 134).  Matthew Sun was the first of the frosh-soph boys across the finish line, with a 17:43  mark and a 26 second course PR.  The frosh-soph girls found themselves slotted in an elite race with California state powers Great Oak, Buchanan and Dublin; the MVXC girls answered with another smart team race and a tight 53 second 1-5 spread.  The top five freshman girls all ran times between 20:44-21:36.   To give the girls’ marks some perspective, their marks are comparable with MVXC alumna Paru Meyyappan’s freshman time at Woodward of 21:25.  Paru went on to become a team captain and member of an MVXC varsity team that went all the way to the California state meet.   Today, Paru is running in college for the varsity team at Carnegie-Mellon University and she has competing at the NCAA national championships.  That’s pretty good company for our freshman girls!

This is a team of very, very smart racers.  This group is heady enough to not get sucked into an overly fast start, and they are mentally tough and gritty enough to dig in and do the hard work in the middle and back of a race to pass a lot of athletes and score well.  Clearly an athlete can not pass as many runners when they stay in one of the front groups from the beginning of the race, however the mentality is the same–start our running smart, and finish running with your heart.  This is a strategy that works well at both Woodward Park and the MVXC home course of Crystal.  The results show in the competitors that we passed after mile one at Clovis.  This strategy will pay off at Crystal next month, and as we find ourselves closer to the front after a mile our ability to push in the middle of the race will be even more valuable. It’s a pleasure to watch these athletes compete!  

Net Runners Passed After Mile One (October 12)

Vivian Lau  95

Ellie Hsu  85

Upasana Dilip 53

Alex Nguyen  50

Andrew Cole 44

Vivian Cheng  42

Conner Hsu  39

Kyle Tsujimoto  37

Tyler Liu  35

Nerea Northrop  29

Avani Kalari  27

Christian Dulay  27

Nikhita Saldi  26

Justin Yu 24

Sydney Stevens  22

Agnes Wang  21

Sylvana Northrop  20

Rohun Agrawal  18

Triya Roy  15

Andrew Richardson  14

Sean Chen  6

Matthew Sun  4

MVXC also recorded a number of personal records, with the varsity boys standing out.

Woodward Park Personal Records Set

Upasana  1:27

Sahil  :47

Rohun  :43

Matthew  :43

Vivian L  :34

Nitin  :28

Kyle  :26

Andrew C  :25

Andrew R  :25

Conner  :24

Sylvana  :10

Pranav  :08

The Clovis Invitational saw an excellent performance by all 30 athletes who ran, and set our team up very well for the last month of our 2019 cross country season.

Complete results are posted on XCStats.

Mr. Ma joined us for the trip; expect some great photos to be posted soon!

Crystal Preview

Earlier in the week, Monta Vista competed in the second SCVAL meet of the year at the historic Crystal Springs course.  While the team wants to run well, the main goal is to learn this challenging 2.95 mile course and prepare for the league championship meet four weeks later.  With a dozen PRs and good team results, we feel like that mission was accomplished.

Rohun and Andrew again lead the boys team, with top-10 finishes and solid PRs.  Sean Chen and Steve Ho recorded the biggest PRs, and the boys’ varsity team was 4th in the league.  The varsity boys’ team time was an impressive three and a half minutes faster than the team time at last year’s Preview.  Sylvana and Triya paced the girls with Jannah right there too, and the varsity girls took 2nd place in the 14 team SCVAL league.  

Complete results are at XCStats.

Crystal Springs PRs Set October 8