Week Seven Recap: Baylands, Grit and more!

Monta Vista’s season reached the halfway point between the first practice of the season and toeing the line at the Central Coast Section Championships…let’s review week seven.

SCVAL Season Opener at Baylands – September 20, 2022

Several years ago at a somewhat contentious SCVAL coach’s meeting, the season opening meet was moved from a ‘bunny’ course (anything around two miles) to a championship distance, the 5km course at Baylands.  Five Ks are a true test of high school cross country.

The varsity boys’ team were lead on Tuesday’s SCVAL Season Opener at Baylands Park by senior Denny Dong and sophomore Tanay Parikh to a 10th place finish.  Denny returned from injury to run a strong 21st place, while Tanay and senior Ari Rajaram both ran races with paces under 6 minutes per mile.  Senior newcomer Gene Zhou continued to impress with an 18:48 mark and senior Alex Nguyen wrapped up the top five for MVXC.  Seventh runner William Wu had the biggest PR of the day, with a 20:01 that was 2:48 faster than his previous best mark at Baylands!  The JV boys team, with Sean Basu, Arda Cinnioglu and Amogh Rajagopal all crossing the finish line within 39 seconds of each other, took 9th place.  The frosh-soph boys team had two sophomores promoted to varsity but still ran to a 9th place team finish, as freshman Ravi Polisetti dipped under 19 with his 18:58 for 25th place, along with Soham Beesetti’s 20:06 and Darren Lin’s 20:11.

For the ladies, the varsity girls dialed up an 8th place finish powered by the day’s only first to fifth finishing gap of under one minute; Sydney Stevens, Anika Bhandarkar, Megan Nieh, Avani Kalari and Nerea Northrop were separated by only 42 seconds!  Anika and Megan’s marks were both PRs.  Manasi Prasad continued her strong season with a big 2:13 PR and she is aiming for even more. The JV girls had a 6th place team finish, with Meena Kolli, Jasmine Varma and Madi Polidoro coming in within 11 seconds of each other.  

MVXC saw 12 personal records set at Baylands:

Complete results are at XCStats.  Malcolm Slaney took some great photos that are free to download.

Anna Hsiao Day

MVXC usually runs Horse + Garrods as a full team about a month and a half into the season–it is a hard run, and the first few times the team has a long run out towards Stevens Canyon, the new runners have an option of running the flatter Matadors’ Point instead.  The first day that everyone runs horse is a big day.

One day in September 2015, MVXC was running up Horse for their first Horse + Garrods run of the year.  Coach Flatow was grinding up Horse, talking to senior Anna Hsiao.  Anna says to coach, “I really like the first time everyone runs up Horse.”

“Why?”, asks coach.  It was about 90 degrees and the sun was baking down on everyone.

Anna says, “well, it’s really hard.  And the first time we all run this, it’s almost always hot.  And everyone is really sad.  And that’s kind of funny.”

Coach had always thought of Anna as a nice, quiet, artistic girl.  Turns out she had an evil streak.  Who knew?  Apparently almost everyone but coach–when he told that story, other people seemed to think that sounded like Anna!

And Anna Hsiao Day was born–the first trip up Horse for the whole team is named in her honor.  That was September 22 for the MVXC 2022 season!  Well done, team!

Note:  A fun family activity is to take your parents and siblings on a hike up Horse on Sunday…pack a snack…show them where you run!  I bet they will be surprised you ran up that hill, and I think they will be impressed by what you are doing during your training.

Matador Miles II

More than half the team were out at 7am on September 24 for round two of Matador Miles, an iconic MVXC workout.  Twenty seven athletes came out for the optional Saturday morning workout, arriving at 7am…that is a gritty and motivated group.  So much of the battle for improvement is simply getting yourself out the door and ready to go; when most of the world is home in bed just dreaming about success and achievements, 27 MVXC athletes were already out and on the trails and working towards their future successes!  There were some impressive marks, and big improvement compared to the fifteen athletes who tackled our first round of Matador Miles, four weeks prior, on August 27.

Anika dropped her average pace by 19 seconds per mile; all four of her reps in August were over seven minutes, all four of her reps in September were less than seven.  Katie Lee was 17 seconds faster on average AND added a fourth rep; Darren Lin knocked off 18 seconds and Ruhaan Shah 15 while going from three to five reps!  Manasi Prasad dropped 33 seconds, Nick Pantino 23 hill adding a rep to four total, Tanay 10, Ethan Yang 14.  Gene Zhou ran a total of six reps in his first ever set of Matador Miles.  Big shout outs and thank you to Valerie, Anika, Avani, Hemani, Meena, Karena, Katie Lee, Lilia, Megan, Nerea, Manasi, Sydney, Joey, Agnes, Soham, Ian, Darren, Nick, Tanay, Amogh, Ari, Ruhaan, William, Ethan and Gene for being at the track and ready to tackle a big workout that early on a Saturday morning.  Solid morning of work from MVXC!

Alumni Update

Vivian Lau (MVXC 2022 crushed her first ever college 6km race, running a 24:20 (6:31 pace for 6km) and placing 18th at the Bowdoin Invitational as her Tufts University team placed first;  the Bowdoin Invitational is the course preview race for the NCAA Eastern Regional meet coming up in November…Rohun Agrawal (MVXC 2021) got back to racing as he comes back from an injury, cruising to a 27:57 (5:37 per mile race pace in the 8km) for his CalTech cross country team at the San Marcos Cougar Challenge…Sylvana Northrop placed 62nd for UC San Diego in the UC Riverside Cross Country Invitational with her fine 21:30 6km mark.  

Grit Recognition

MVXC are trying something this season…some grit recognition.  These are not awards, exactly.  What we want to do is try to recognize and celebrate team members who are working to build a gritty team culture.  There are many ways that an individual can work to help their team become more gritty.  Anyone can display grit–grit doesn’t care how many years you have been running, how tall you are, how naturally gifted you are.  Grit is a choice everyone can make.  All of us can strive to be gritty, to decide to be grittier.  Here are the athletes honored for grit during week seven:

Senior Karena Lai and Freshman Ethan Yang:  At the start of Matador Miles on August 27, coach told the team that for anyone that was running this workout for the first time, three reps was a good number.  Coach was standing about 200m from the start, about 30 minutes into the workout, when Karena and Ethan came by on what must have been their fourth rep.  Afterwards, coach asked Ethan what motivated him to run a fourth rep, and he said ‘well, Karena was running a fourth rep, so I just went along’.  Karena’s explanation was something like, ‘well, Ethan looked like he wanted to run a fourth rep, so I thought why not?’  That little moment is a benefit from a gritty team–when the little voice in your head is telling you ‘you have done the minimum that was required, you don’t have to do any extra’ it can be hard to make yourself get out there and bang out another.  But when you look at a teammate and you just think, ‘shoot it wouldn’t be that hard to do this with my friend, and it might even be fun’ the little voice doesn’t have much to say.  Teammates that pull you into extra effort and make that extra effort easier are a big benefit from joining and building a gritty team.

Sophomore Anika Bhandarkar:   During the summer, after Coach Flatow posted a list of people who had started the clearance process, he got a message from Anika:  “hey coach, I don’t recognize some of the names on the list, can you send me their contact information so I can welcome them to the team and invite them to summer running?’  That is incredible captain behavior.  Anika shows her grit in many ways, from adding on extra at the end of workouts and constant drive to challenge herself to pride in her teammates, but that kind of caring for new teammates stands out.  In the decade I’ve been coaching, no one has every done that.  Anika helps build a gritty culture that Angela Duckworth herself would admire!

Sophomore Hemani Kamarshi:  After Anna Hsiao Day 2022, coach asked Lilia and Julianna how their first time running Horse felt.  Both athletes kind of rolled their eyes and talked about how hard that climb was but also how satisfying getting to the top felt.  Then they both got excited and said they wanted to nominate Hemani for grit recognition; Hemani had been chirping at Lilia and Juliana all the way up, encouraging them to keep going and telling them they could do it.  I’m not sure whether it was Lilia or Juliana who enthused that Hemani deserves grit recognition for her ‘relentless optimism’.  I can’t think of a better reason to get a Culture of Grit recognition t-shirt!