Palo Alto City Championships

Its late and I'm a little under the weather, but here's a little about
the meet today:

First race of the day was the F/S boys. Leading the way for the team
was Sophomore Ben Sklaroff, who ran perfectly even splits of 5:33 to
place 4th overall, being 3 Gunn sophomores who will all be running
Varsity next week at Leagues. For Ben this performance had to taste
sweet, as this season to date had been very frustrating. He ran like a
veteran going out at an even pace and strongly moving thru the field
during the 2nd half of the race, to finish in a stellar time of 12:07.
He looked especially great over the last half mile, and with those 3
sophomores from Gunn moved to Varsity next week - watch out for Ben in
the FS race 7 days from now at Crystal - if he can run a similar type
of race he could be a force to be reckoned with.

Closely behind Ben came fellow Sophomores: Peter Wilson, Philip
Chen, Henry Jordan and Conor Ney - all breaking 12:30. They took
places 5,6,7,8 giving the team a very strong pack of 5 to separate
Gunn's 3 & 4 runners.

Throughout the rest of the field there were far too many remarkable
performances for me to list them all here... look at the "splits" link
from the website and you'll see how much the frosh/soph runners
improved from the beginning of the year till now - its quite amazing!
All of the kids in this group have really worked hard all year and
should be tremendously proud of themselves - hard work does indeed pay
off!

The Varsity Girls were up next, led by Senior Mia Lattanzi. The girls
ran very good races to give Gunn a run for their money and to take
down a strong Castilleja team. Junior Captain Gillian Lui ran 2nd for
the girls, with senior Leah Gaeta close behind her. Not far back from
them was the varsity's 2nd pack of girls, including Sophomores Regina
Wang, the ever-improving Kathleen Higgins, and Junior Elizabeth Scott.
Great run today girls! (I hope you all noticed how much you improved
from 7 weeks ago when you ran here - very impressive!)

The Junior Varsity Girls race may have been the coming out performance
for Freshman Erin Kiekhaefer. Watch out for this girl the rest of the
season and certainly in future years! She ran away from a very deep
Gunn group to win the race in a team that was not very far off from
many of the Varsity Girls times. Her teammates behind her also did
their work with a great pack of Junior Sarah Haydock, Freshman Leigh
Dairaghi, and Junior Tamar Ben-Shachar. Rounding out the JV's top 5
was Senior Ariana Hoyt. This performance again put the girls a few
points back from a regionally ranked Gunn team, and ahead of
Castilleja's JV squad.

Last up were the Varsity & JV Boys... a veteran group of Juniors and
Seniors who have been training hard for many years for this
post-season, which starts today and peaks at CCS in a little less than
3 weeks. The Varsity boys took to the course a little offended by the
recent regional polls which placed the Gunn boys 2 spots ahead of us
in CCS. Sophomore Philip MacQuitty and Junior Charlie Avis decided to
send a little message to the team's in the area... I think the message
read something like: "Watch Out! Here we come!"

MacQuitty simply ran the 3rd fastest time ever on the course, the
fastest ever by a sophomore to win the 2.18 mile race in 10:43 (an
average of 4:54 per mile). Avis was not to be outdone as he ran the
16th fastest all-time race on this course to take 2nd place overall in
the race. Then, amazingly close to our stud top-two came Senior
newcomer Brian Karvelas - basketball convert who just continues to
improve in his first full-season of cross-country. Brian's time of
11:11 is faster than the times of recent Alumni Francis Reynolds and
Michael Nordlund - both of whom have gone on to have very respectable
collegiate careers at the University of Puget Sound and Vanderbilt,
respectively. Rounding out the scoring for the varsity team came
Senior Julius Berezin and Junior Skyler Cummins. The final score of
the Varsity meet was: 23-34. Not that any of us care about rankings,
but I think our message was sent loud and clear - Watch out for the
Vikings!

Last, the JV boys took to the course. I think four or five of the boys
had aspirations of winning this race, as we always have a very
competitive JV boys team. But today's race went to Junior Colin
Schmitt, who continues to have a tremendous Junior season. Colin
asserted himself as a definite varsity member of next year's team by
running a masterful 12:03 time. Great work Colin! I hope it was fun!
Trailing close behind Colin came a torrent of Paly seniors: Wes
Duplantier (12:14), Willie Xiang (12:18), Henry Becker (12:24), Alfred
Chen (12:30), and Senior Alok Subbarao (12:31). Combined with the 7
Seniors who ran in the Varsity race, this group of 12 boys should
really be proud of everything they've accomplished this season and
throughout their career. I hope you guys are amped up for your final
high school XC race - next week at the League Championships at Crystal
Springs. You've all worked *so* hard - I'm tremendously proud of you.

Until next week, (this turned out longer than I anticipated, but its
just so much fun to rave about these great kids)...