The cross country team wrapped up its regular season with a strong performance at the SCVAL Championships at the famed 2.95-mile Crystal Springs race course on Nov. 4. The varsity girls placed fourth, and the varsity boys placed fifth.
There were numerous PRs from the team. Most notably, sophomore Claire Hou won the De Anza League Varsity Girls Championship by 18 seconds, coming in first out of 46 runners with a personal best time of 18:52.
“I was extremely happy and excited with my time and winning the championship, especially because I ran my PR,” Hou said. “Coach Follmar’s workouts and the support from my teammates made this possible. Even though this is Coach Follmar’s first year of being the head coach, her training helped prepare the team for the meets. I especially liked how she carefully planned our training and balanced hard workouts with easier ones.”
Another strong race was run by sophomore Sadie MacBeth, who placed eighth with a time of 20 minutes flat. Overall, four of the six varsity girls had PRs.
For the varsity boys, freshman Arjun Garlapati led the team in a competitive race with a PR of 16:47, placing 18th out of 82 runners. Freshman Alex Khain followed close behind with a time of 17:16 and placed 25th.
This race was also an especially memorable one for many seniors as it was their last high school cross country meet.
One of those seniors, Liam Lenh, said, “In the first mile of the race, I was running pretty conservatively, but at some point, I reminded myself I was running my last ever high school cross country race. I repeated the ‘several more minutes of pain or a lifetime of regret’ mantra thing to myself, and I started picking off people one by one. After the race, I was mostly just trying to take in the scene around me so that I could remember how it looked and felt.”
The Falcons will compete at CCS Saturday afternoon at Crystal Springs on the same course as league finals, with a potential chance to secure a bid at the CIF State Cross Country Championships on Nov. 29.
Competing for the varsity boys are Garlapati, senior Jack Dong, Khain, senior Jack Tong, sophomore Advay Salhotra, senior Kyle Li and sophomore Mihith Verma; for the girls, Hou, Mcbeth, freshman Mihika Mishra, freshman Neena Srivatsa, sophomore Alice Zheng, freshman Yiran Liu and freshman Prapti Venkataraman will compete.
