The Three Course Challenge might be the nuttiest invitational ever! This is certainly the most challenging high school cross country course that we have ever seen–by a huge margin. (No other course we is close to being as hard. Not Crystal, not Toro. 3CC makes Mt. Sac look like Lynbrook.) And…this is as much fun as any team could have at an invitational!
The Three Course Challenge is held at the Camp Rilea national guard training base in Warrington, Oregon. The meet is hosted by Seaside High School, about 10 miles North of an old hotel that Coach Flatow’s great aunts (his grandmother’s sisters) purchased in 1920. Coach Flatow’s family is the team’s connection to the area, and in 2016 we decided to go represent in Coach’s family’s old territory.
Some quick background on the unique rules of the Three Course Challenge. There are, as you might guess, three courses: Red (hard), Blue (moderate), and White (easy–what a joke! The three courses should be labeled hard, harder, insane). If a team wants to compete for a team championship, the varsity runners have to draw for courses; there are three red, two blue and two white chips in a coffee can and the athletes must run the course that they draw. The finish places of all seven runners count and the scores from three red and two each blue and white are added together to get a team champion.
After flying to Portland and driving out to the coast, MVXC checked in at Camp Rilea and previewed the course. As soon as we hit the sand dunes we realized that the course was going to be a challenge; when we saw the mud pits our eyes got really wide. But after that, when we thought we had seen the worst that the Three Course Challenge had to offer, we made the turn into the elk trails. At that point, everyone on the team started screaming–this course is the BEST! We ran through the elk forest, yelling and laughing, and by the time we popped out of the forest and started the long grassy downhill towards the finish, everyone on the team wanted to run the red-hard course!
We piled back into the vans and headed to Seaside high school to check in–and draw for courses. Coach Neil Branson, the cross country coach at Seaside high school and founder and meet director of the Three Course Challenge, wanted to meet our team and also administer the drawing to our varsity squads. It turns out that Coach Branson has a wicked sense of humor; also, I had told him that every one of the MVXC kids wanted to run the hard course, and he wanted to see if I was bragging. So, Coach Branson loaded our can with all white chips. After the first three kids drew white/easy and screamed ‘NOOOO!’ and were disappointed, he told us what he had been doing–which had everyone laughing! After that we had a redraw to pick our courses, and headed in to the pasta dinner at the high school.
It was a great pasta dinner, and we also found out that we were a little unusual. In most of the other teams that we watched draw for courses, the kids would be whispering ‘white-white-white’ and were sad if they drew the red/hard course. I was watching our kids observe this and we where thinking, ‘what is wrong with these kids? Don’t they want to run the red course?’ I was truly proud of MVXC for wanting the challenge.
After we finished dinner, we headed up to Camp Rilea. We stayed the night in barracks; Coach Branson kindly gave Monta Vista two adjoining rooms with 12 bunks each so we were able to put all boys and coaches together in one room and all girls and coaches together in the other–really convenient, and also it was quiet enough that all of the kids banged out some homework and got to sleep early. Over night, it started to rain–not super hard, but steady. Coach Flatow got up to get a few early miles of running in and came back drenched and walking to breakfast (also on the Camp Rilea base) was quite wet. We were all a little worried about how the run would feel, but to the credit of our wonderful team, they were very upbeat and positive and ready to go.
And…miraculously, at about 9am, the rain stopped. For all the races, we had gray skies and clean, crisp, cool air. It was perfect racing conditions, and a wonderful running day.
The races started off with boys’ white, followed five minutes later by girls’ white. With these mass starts there were almost 800 athletes out racing the white course at the same time. Bennett got MVXC off to a great start, with a third place finish, followed by Jeffrey finishing tenth and Nitin bringing home a 32nd place out of 441 finishers. Nitin was also the third freshman overall in the white race. Kelly and Anjali followed up with equally strong performances, Kelly matching Bennett with our second third place finish and Anjali coming home in 20th place out of 336 girls. Kelly and Anjali were also passing quite a few boys who had started five minutes before them!
Excitement was building as the blue races started, and MVXC continued to compete well. Andy lead our boys with a 13th place in the blue race, followed by Kyle in 31st (third freshman) and Aravind in 56th out of 449 athletes. The girls also continued their strong run, with Claire coming home in 15th and Paru right with her in 17th, and Lauren romping home with a 53rd out of 302 women.
Finally the red team, after waiting and watching, took to the course. White and blue teams were finished and were completely exuberant and were out cheering for their teammates, particularly on the elk trail, as Justin hammered in with an 18th place, Derek close behind in 23rd, Ryan coming in 70th place and Eliot closing out the Monta Vista boys as he finished 80th out of 429 runners. Triya was first in for the Monta Vista girls with a 28th place (the first freshman to finish the red course!), Sanjana notched a 51st, Reema (incredibly, this is Reema’s first cross country race ever after we recruited her out of track) in 67th and Akshara in 69th out of 268 young women. All of the girls continued the trend of passing lots of boys!
It took a while to sort out all the different divisions…at the end, we found that Monta Vista would bring home eight individual medals:
Andy Fang: 9th place, D1, Blue course
Paru Meyyappan: 9th place, D1, Blue course
Justin Lin: 9th place, D1, Red course
Anjali Thontakudi: 8th place, D1, White course
Claire Chang: 8th place, D1, Blue course
Jeffrey Xu: 6th place, D1, White course
Kelly Bishop: 3rd place, D1, White course
Bennett Zhang: 1st place, D1, White course
Monta Vista did great in the team competition, also! The girls took home a plaque and seven medals for third place in D1; our scorers were:
Monta Vista Girls: 3rd Team, D1
Reema – Red – 67
Sanjana – Red – 51
Triya – Red – 28
Anjali – White – 20
Paru – Blue – 17
Claire – Blue – 15
Kelly – White – 3
…and the boys took home second place in D1, lead by:
Monta Vista Boys: 2nd Team D1
Ryan – Red – 70
Kyle – Blue – 31
Derek – Red – 23
Justin – Red – 18
Andy – Blue – 13
Jeffrey – White – 10
Bennett – White -3
The Three Course Challenge is clearly a labor of love by the meet director, Neil Branson. This was a great, well run event. The planning and preparation by a vast number of volunteers was needed to make the 3CC happen. Coach Branson took a lot of personal interest in Monta Vista and made sure we had good accommodations, and in the middle of all his busy day, took time to come and meet us and welcome us. We need to talk about something nice to do for Coach Branson.
After we finished racing, we cleaned up our barracks and headed down to coach’s house, where we demolished an incredible amount of pizza (lunch) and enchiladas (dinner). We also had the chance to meet coach’s friend Amy Cragg, who drove out from Portland to hang with us. Amy also went for a run with us on the beach on Sunday (more on that later) before we returned to California and reality.
3CC was a fine event, really different than anything we have ever done before. The difficulty of the courses gave us an opportunity to really free our minds. The times had nothing to do with any course we had run before, so in a way our times were meaningless. At the end, if an athlete walked up to me and said ‘did I do well?’ the honest answer would be, ‘I have no idea.’ The real questions are, ‘How do you think you did? Did you try your best? Did you run smart, did you use what you have learned about racing? Did you put out the maximum effort? Did you treat your competitors as gifts?’ And perhaps most importantly, ‘did you conduct yourself with class and dignity?’
As I finish up, I realize I can answer the question, ‘how did I do?’ My answer to all of you, is that you did great. I’m glad you took home medals and trophies, but I would be just as proud of you as if you came back empty-handed. You were all a pleasure to travel with, you were polite and respectful to everyone we came across during the entire trip. When the weather was good and when it threatened, you were upbeat and positive. You all thirsted for the big challenge–you wanted the hardest course, the most difficult challenge. I thought you were very nice to competitors and also appreciative of the volunteers (I didn’t see you all thank volunteers but I believe that you did). You all were great.
I’m proud to be your coach.
The photos below are roughly laid out in order that the course was run; so photos I took during the shake out, white, blue and red courses are kind of mixed up so that you can see photos early in the course, middle then late. This selection of photos should give a feeling of running the course. I tried to include photos of most of you. I have many more photos!
