Lowell Invitational Summary: Frosh/Soph, JV, Varsity

Congratulations to the following boys who completed their first ever XC race on Saturday:

Jordan Brown, Ryan Brenner, and Michael Buteau

For many others, it was their 2nd race, but actually their first true "cross-country" race. Yesterday's meet at Golden Gate Park had lots of grass, uphills, downhills, sharp turns, wrong turns, muddy spots, sand pits and a very fast downhill finish! All of this led to a great day for the Paly Boys Cross-Country team.

FROSH/SOPH BOYS

The frosh/soph boys got the day started led by sophomore Peter Wilson. Peter, running in his first season of XC, went out hard and battled for the entire 2.13 "short-course" miles to place 11th out of 152 in a very fast time of 12:35. Fifteen seconds back sophomore Conor Ney caught classmate Henry Jordan over the last half mile and they sprinted through the finish line together, with Conor in 21st place and Henry in 22nd. Peter & Conor would earn individual medals for their performances while Henry would walk away as the fastest non-medaler in the race.

As many of you know, XC scoring works by taking each team's top five finishers, adding up their places, and then the lowest total wins. Well yesterday our Frosh/Soph boys were running without two of our top 5: Ben Sklaroff and Scott Alexander, and as a coach I was very interested to see who would step up to fill the void.

As it turned out, sophomores Josh Newby & Alex Voet would have *huge* days, dropping tons of time from last week's race and solidifying our team scoring by placing 45th and 46th, just a minute back from Peter. Our top 5 scorers would earn the team 5th place out of 14, very close to both the 3rd and 4th place teams.

Right behind Josh & Alex, a pack of Paly runners came storming across the line, including our top freshman finisher Brandon Dukovic who would place 62nd in a "sophomore" race with a very fast time of 14:12 - nice running Brandon!

Also having a huge race in the middle of the pack was sophomore Reed Carter! Reed's time of 14:29 was about 80 seconds faster than his time at Gunn 2.5 weeks ago - and Gunn's course is a faster course! So he really improved by almost 2 minutes! Keep up the hard work Reed!

Here were our full results for FS Boys (152 total finishers):

JV BOYS

With an amazing group of 20 seniors, the Paly Boys show up to every meet expecting to dominate the JV race. Many of our athletes running JV would be varsity athletes for most other schools. In fact, on this day, our JV team had a top-5 "team time" that would have beaten 14 of the 43 teams competing in the Varsity races!

Junior Colin Schmitt led the way with a 3rd place finish in a phenomenal time of 17:32. This may have been the best race of Colin's career, and has me *super* excited to watch him run the rest of the this season and also for his senior year! After Colin, Paly packed it in. Senior Wes Duplantier put in an incredible late-race surge to run down most of the competition and finish in 4th place. Senior Alfred Chen ran his best race since his sophomore year to place 5th, then proclaimed, "I'm back!". Senior captain Sam Jones struggled through a side cramp to gut out what he said was the "most painful" race of his career and place 8th overall. Junior Alex Browne ran the best race of his XC career for 9th - unfortunately he's having surgery on Monday and will be out for the majority of the season. We're hoping for a fast recovery Alex so that we get you back for Leagues and for the track season!

Rounding out our top seven (medal winners) were Junior Erik Klingbeil in 11th place and Senior Henry Becker in 16th. Unfortunately, Senior captain Alok Subbarao, in 25th place, did not earn a medal. The meet provides medals to the top two teams (but just their top 7 runners), and then provides medals to the top 12 runners who *weren't* on one of the winning teams. After taking out our top 7 and the second place team's top 7, Alok was one of the top 12 individuals not receiving a medal, but the meet directors decided that since our team had already gotten our share of medals, that Alok should not receive one. In one of the classiest moves I've seen in my 4 year coaching career, Junior Colin Schmiitt, our top finisher in the race, graciously presented the Senior Alok with his medal - very cool Colin! And much deserved Alok!

Here were our full results for JV Boys: (151 total finishers)

VARSITY BOYS

After an early departure and a long day, the Varsity Boys set out at 2:30pm to make it worth the wait. This was our first true test of the year and with high expectations for the season, a good performance today would set the boys off to the right start!

Encouraged by their coach to get off the line in good position, the boys may have taken it out a little hard, but nonetheless, the performances were truly incredible. My goal for the team was to compete for the team title and for all seven athletes to break 17 minutes.

From the start, Sophomore Philip MacQuitty got right down to business. Joined by Junior teammate Charlie Avis and with the rest of our pack not far back in about 20th place, the boys had taken care of business at the start and put themselves in position to compete with the top teams and run a great race. From there, Philip ran side-by-side with one competitor, with a very fast first mile and then slowly pulled away for the win. His time of 14:59 would be the fastest of the day. Charlie may have been a little too agressive at the start in his first 3 mile race of the season, and faded a little bit over the second half of the race, but nonetheless ran an incredible time of 16:01 - good for 14th place.

Then came our pack - led most of the way by Senior Brian Karvelas! Brian is a great story because this is his first season of XC. He's run track for us two of the last 3 years but has always focused on basketball at this time of the year. Now giving running a try, he's emerging as an impact runner and integral part of the team. We're psyched to have you Brian!

Senior half-miler Julius Berezin actually outkicked Brian at the finish line to place 30th in 16:24, with Brian one second and one place back. Julius, known early in his career for a ferocious kick, was determined to finally break through with a great XC race and was excited to find that his kick has returned!

Senior Captain Brian Hsueh ran 5th for the team yesterday, just behind Brian and Julius in 36th place, clocking 16:28. For Brian, an oft-injured lover of running, I hope it was nice just to be out on the course competing with his teammates. This is going to be a season to remember, and keeping Brian and all the other guys healthy is one of our key goals.

Rounding out the Varsity team were Seniors Jeremy Jacob & Gilbert Choi. Finishing together in 47th and 48th place in the same time of 16:45. While these were incredible times, faster than anyone could have expected, I don't think either Jeremy or Gilbert felt like they were at their best today - but still boys, not bad for an off day!

When the points were all added up, two teams from out of the area went 1-2 and Mountain View, one of our league rivals edged us by 7 points for 3rd place, despite our superior team time. For our first race of the season, it was a resounding success. We were without Junior Skyler Cummins and Senior Captain Rajan Narang and we still competed for the win, and had 7 guys not just break 17 minutes, but actually run 16:45 or faster! I hope you boys are as excited as I am with how well you're running! And this is just the beginning!

Varsity Boys results: (155 finishers)