The Watermelon Run is an ancient MVXC ritual that kicks off a cross country season. So on August 29, 2019, a group of nervous runners got on the line in Stevens Canyon, ready to see what their legs were ready to do.
And it was quite the day!
MVXC runs a real cross country course for a time trial. Rather than a few laps around the track or a school, the Watermelon is run on a 2.6 mile mostly dirt course in Stevens Canyon with some real hills. We have complete records back through 2005 and the course was used before that. It’s a good measuring stick.
The MVXC runners showed that they are ready for an exciting season…Claire Yang, Sylvana Northrop, Ellie Hsu, Vivian Lau, Triya Roy, Upasana Dilip, Steve Ho, Sotirios Kougiouris, Pranav Reddy, Sean Chen, Sahil Goel, Matthew Sun, Conner Hsu, Christian Dulay, Andrew Cole, Andrew Richardson, Justin Yu, Andrew Chen, and Tyler Liu all recorded PRs! That certainly speaks to some miles this last summer.
The boys’ team looks to make a statement, as their team time (the aggregate of the top five runners) was the second fastest time recorded by an MV team at Watermelon. The girls also impressed, with the fourth fastest time of any MV team–the girls’ 91:30 slots them between the 2013 squad which went on to win CCS and the 2015 squad which went to the State Meet. Not bad company!
Andrew Richardson, Sahil Goel, Matthew Sun, Sylvana Northrop, Triya Roy, Ellie Hsu and Avani Kalari all ran marks that put them in the top 20 all time list for the Stevens Canyon course. Together with Jannah Sheriff, Rachel Jiang, Kyle Tsujimoto, Nitin Subramanian, and Rohun Agrawal who made the top 20 in prior years, MVXC starts 2019 with an impressive list of all-timers!
The freshmen girls displayed a notable group of newcomers, with Avani Kalari, Sydney Stevens, Nerea Northrop, Agnes Wang and Nikhita Saldi all having marks in the top 22 all time for freshmen. Think of that for a second–25% of the best marks recorded by MV girls in a single class! One run is not enough to prove anything, but this sure is an encouraging start; when a group like this comes together and works together for a period of years, amazing things can happen–and not only incredible athletic results. What’s great about what happens is the shared journey, as a group shares the ups and downs during years of work and progress. The friendships that can be developed in distance running, though thousands of shared miles and hours of conversation, and through PRs and setbacks, can last for lifetimes.
And after all the running…lots of Watermelon!
Complete results are at XCStats. Mr. Ma will be posting photos soon (check back later if the new photos are not up yet). You can download any of Mr. Ma’s photos for your own use.
MVXC19 is rolling! Next stop is our season opener, the Lagoon Valley Classic in Vacaville on September 7.
