MVXC Rocks the SCVAL Championships

The Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Cross Country Championships are the day that athletes circle on their calendar each season.  For most of MVXC, this is the last meet of the season and an opportunity to show the results of a full season of training together with a very competitive field on one of the best courses in the country.

First up for Monta Vista were our junior varsity girls, and they recorded a solid third place team finish.  Both Serena Geis (third) and Lauren Ling (fourth) recorded very fine marks, below the 21 minute barrier.  Not far behind was freshman Rachel Jiang in 10th place with a 21:29 mark, while Vibha Iyengar and Arushi Agastwar completed the scoring for MVXC.  Serena, Rachel, Vibha and Arushi all had PRs for nice finishes to our season.  Serena, Lauren and Rachel earned all-league honors and medals for their performances.

The Frosh-Soph boys recorded a second place finish, lead by Nitin Subramanian’s fourth place and a 17:25 clocking.  Freshmen Andrew Richardson and Rohun Agrawal were close behind in 6th and 7th place giving Monta Vista three medalists and three all-league honorees.  Sophomore Jeff Flewelling completed a promising sophomore year with a 16th place finish and Jason Yip closed out the scoring in 24th place with Siddhant Patel right behind him.  This was a strong showing from the future of the MVXC boys’ team!

The varsity girls had their fierce game faces on, and put on a show with a smart, strategic team race.  Going out under control for the first mile, they moved up hard and fast during the rest of the race.  At some point we might chip-time SCVAL races, and coach also wants to put mats at the one and two mile marks; if we could record how much we moved up and how many athletes our runners passed in the last two miles of this race, I think we would be amazed.  (If anyone wants to volunteer to try to stand at mile one and do some counting one day, let’s find out!)  Sarah Feng reported that the middle of the race was particularly satisfying, as she was running together with Triya Roy and Sanjana Borle.  As they come up on another runner, Sarah said the three Monta Vista athletes would naturally flow out and around to pass the competitor.  That sounds like a fun way to run a race!  Sarah lead MVXC in with a fourth place finish, with Triya, Claire Chang, Sanjana and freshman Sylvana Northrop all coming in under 20 minutes on the hilly 2.95 mile Crystal Springs course.  The spread from runner one to runner five was a mere 25 seconds, the narrowest spread from any team in any division, boys or girls, for the entire day–that was 56 teams!  Sarah, Triya, Claire, Sanjana and Sylvana all earned varsity All-League honors for their performances.

The Monta Vista girls ended up with the second best team performance out of the 14 teams in SCVAL.  SCVAL is one of the toughest leagues for division 1 girls in the section; this was a performance we can be proud of!

SCVAL Varsity Girls Composite Results

The boys’ varsity team wrapped up the day with a strong third place team finish.  Senior Jeffrey Xu lead the way with a sparkling fourth place showing, and Kingsley Wang joined him as an all-league performer with a 15th place finish.  Senior Derek Lee, Junior Aravind Meyyappan and Senior Justin Lin completed the scoring in spots 16-20.  On a composite basis, the boys’ team finished fifth in SCVAL.  Aravind’s move into varsity is notable; from his freshman year to his junior year, Aravind’s average race pace has become 34 seconds faster!  That is more than a minute and a half on a 5km course (and indeed, Aravind’s mark at Crystal at SCVALs went from 19:27 to 17:00 from his freshman to his junior year).  Similarly, in the last two years Jeffrey worked his SCVAL championship time down from 17:41 as a sophomore to 16:08 in his senior year, a 1:33 improvement.  Improvements like this are not easy–there is a lot of work behind what Jeffrey, Aravind and others accomplished.  A dedicated high school runner can realistically set a goal of a 30 to 60 second per year improvement in a 5km race time if they are willing to be dedicated and put in the work necessary.  We are talking about many miles and a lot of effort!–however, if you care about your running, enjoy running, have a passion for distance running, then 30-60 seconds a year is possible.  Your improvement may not be linear, but improvement will come if you persist.  Freshmen can look at what Jeffrey, Aravind and others were able to do and compare this to their first year marks and think, ‘if I can keep working…what might I accomplish?’

The boys’ varsity-2 team results must be noted too; while this race is not officially scored as a team, the unofficial scoring showed that the boys took a narrow second place with Ryan Niu in second and Karthik Guruvayurappan, Jeffrey Tian, Ethan Lin and Jonathan Ho all in the top 15.

Overall, Monta Vista runners set an impressive 52 personal records at the SCVAL championships, lead by David Wu for the boys with a 3:04 improvement from earlier in the season and Serena Yip’s 1:34 drop in time.  Success is often measured by how far you have come as much as where you end up.

Personal Records Set by Monta Vista Athletes

Both the boys’ and girls’ varsity teams qualified for the Central Coast Section championships next Saturday, November 11 in Toro Park, Salinas.  The top two Division 1 teams will represent our 150 school section in the California State Championships two weeks later.  Good luck to both our teams!  Please consider driving down to Salinas to cheer our runners to their best race of the year.

Results are up on XCStats, and Hank Lawson posted results with a nice composite rollup of all the boys and all the girls races on the day as if there were only two big races.  Mr. Ma put up a couple of photo albums with some nice photos you might want to download.  If you get a chance…please let Mr. Lawson and Mr. Ma know how much you value their efforts.  Mr. Lawson does a lot for SCVAL and area running even though he no longer coaches, and Mr. Ma has been taking photos for MVXC all season. Neither gentleman has a child running in the area any longer!  Their work to make our league and our experience better deserves to be appreciated.

Going forward for the week of November 6 and beyond, Varsity is still practicing.  Any other runners can still join us to continue to train!  Same time, same place; if you are motivated, come out and practice with us!

See you at the Banquet!  Don’t forget to RSVP.