Watermelon Run 2024

Monta Vista Cross Country opened its season with the traditional Watermelon Run on August 22, 2024, a 2.6-mile course through Stevens Canyon Park. This is not an easy start to a season—the Watermelon course is true cross country*!

The course follows the reservoir out to the keyhole at the turnaround point for the Matador’s Point run, then comes back and finishes where we run our Dirty 4s**.  Senior Tanay Parikh ran home first with a 15:42 (6:02 per mile pace) mark, with senior Ryan Liu not far behind at 16:36. Sophomore Kento Murase and junior Ethan Yang finished virtually side-by-side at 17:25 and 26, and junior Soham Beesetti rounded out the top five with a 17:46 mark.

Anika Bhandarkar started the girls’ team off with a fine time of 17:55, and only the 11th girl to have ran under 18 minutes on our time trial course over the last 20 years! Miranda Hsu was not far back as she started her sophomore campaign with an 18:17; junior Suhani Pahuja unfortunately was one of the athletes who missed the turn, but we are confident she would have been our third girl in with a mark under 20. Freshman Melinda Zhao and senior Katie Lee wrapped up the top five as both came in under 21 minutes.

Spotlight On The Freshmen Boys

Our initial look at our freshman boys is impressive!  For fun, I ran a simulation of all the freshman boys’ teams that have ever run the Watermelon Time Trial. The class of 2028 top five of Tarun, Riu, Constantine, Ashwanth, and Samuel would finish 8th with 172 points (remember low score wins in cross). Only 13 points separate this year’s freshman from 4th place (the class of 2017 team). But there is the interesting thing–our spread was only 35 seconds (spread is the time gap time from the first to the fifth runner).  The top team, the class of 2022, had a 2:14 spread, and that 4th place team of 2017 had a whopping 3:52 spread. The tight spread says two things to me: First, we have a team of boys that is close in current ability so that they can push and pull and encourage each other in training. And next, in the bigger championship meets, that fifth runner can become critical. So I’m thinking this group of freshman boys could be something special. The opportunity, and the trick, is to bond together to help each other stay consistent through all the ups and downs of training and high school, together with some of the boys in the next couple of classes, like Ethan and Soham and Kento and Aidan and Cam and Johan. It will be interesting to see what you all do!

Personal Records Set

Personal records are a favorite metric for MVXC–PRs measure our improvement and are reflections of our dedication, our work, our long-term effort, our passion…our grit.

Abhi made a huge jump, with a five minute personal record; anyone who remembers the extra work he did with Coach Smith last year will remember how far Abhi has come. Cam scored a four minute PR and is off to a fantastic start this season; it will be great to see what he accomplishes in the 2024 season. Anyone who follows her Strava account will not be shocked by Anika’s PR, but no one should take a four-minute personal record for granted! Big PRs require effort, and we can see the sustained work from Abhi, Cam and Anika. Congratulations to all 17 of our athlete how had PRs at Watermelon.

Complete Results and Up Next

Complete results from Watermelon are posted on XCStats.

Up next is our first competition at the Lagoon Valley Classic, next Saturday, August 31. See if you can spot any Monta Vista runners in last year’s highlight video!

And thank you so much to the alumni who came back and helped out!

*Coach Flatow’s high school team ran two laps around the school for a season-opening time trial. Not as impressive!

**The value of running Dirty 4s showed up unexpectedly, as five runners missed a turn—yikes!