Head Coaches: Archie Ljepava and Ian Tippetts

2020-21 season recap: With a truncated season, the team’s main objective was to give student athletes opportunities to still compete with other schools at meets. The Falcons won six of eight meets.

Key Matchups: Wilcox High School, Fremont High School

Star Players: Seniors Harrison Dance (1600m and 3200m), Giulio Morini Bianzino (High Jump, Long Jump); juniors Jason Cheng (200m, 400m) Yuvraj Singh (100m and 200m), Elizabeth Stoiber (1600m and 3200m)

Key losses to graduation: Allison Ha (100m and 200m), Bereket Bailey (100m and 200m), Shama Gupta (100m, 200m)

League: El Camino

Prognosis:

Coming off a shortened and COVID-19-ridden season, the track team has seen a steep decline in returning team members: Most of the team is newcomers.

“With COVID-19, fewer people decided to take sports back up in general,”  head coach Archie Ljepava said. “We have a lot of athletes that are coming out for the first time, so they’re just learning how to sprint properly.”

Ljepava forecasts the season to start out rough, but sees a lot of potential in the members — especially with the increase in girls’ cross country members participating in distance events. Also, with the return of star athletes such as senior Giulio Morini Bianzino, junior Yuvraj Singh who were away from practice because of winter sports, Ljepava has high hopes for the main part of the season.

The team’s first meet on March 3 at Santa Clara set them off to a good start, according to senior sprinter Amitav Rawat. Off the back of key performances by star players, the boys’ varsity team won 78-43 and the girls’ varsity team won 85-34. Notable performances included Singh winning the 100m, Dance winning both 1600m and 3200m, Stoiber getting first in the 1600m, junior Isha Goswami winning the 400m and junior Jalyn Harrigan posting the fifth fastest time in CCS for the women’s 300m hurdles. 

A second meet on March 10 at Mountain View was less successful; many of the stars, including Dance, were resting. Singh won the 100m again, junior Jason Cheng won second place in the 400m and senior Soorya Kuppam won long jump. 

The team’s next meet is on March 24 at home against Cupertino. 

“We won’t be resting any more athletes, so our next invitationals should go pretty well,” said Kuppam. “Overall, we’ve been sweeping our events and have good performances.”