The majority of the boys’ cross-country team finished their season with a disappointing sixth place finish at the Crystal Springs Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Meet (SCVAL) on Nov. 1.
Nikolai Solgaard (’12) placed first for Paly and 13th overall with a time of 16 minutes and 39 seconds. He will continue to run individually at Central Coast Sectionals (CCS). Co-captain Sam Carilli (’12) was second with a time of 17:48 and an overall place of 29, followed by Ben Hawthorne (’13) and Ben May (’13) both with times of 17:52 and places 31 and 32. Justin Zhang (’13), co-captain William Hall (’12) and Matan Geller (’13) finished fifth, sixth and seventh for Paly and rounded out the varsity team.
“It’s kind of a relief [to be almost done] as well as some regret,” co-captain Solgaard said. “It’s a relief because I never really liked this course or just racing in general, but its regret because if I don’t do well in my last couple races, I’m going to leave here with never having done too well [at this course].”
While Solgaard knows he will be able to continue on individually, Carilli and Hawthorne are not sure and the test of the team did not qualify. At his previous race at Crystal Springs, Carilli had a time 48 seconds faster than Nov. 1, and while neither Carilli nor Hawthorne wants his season to be over, they have different attitudes about finishing their seasons. For Carilli this could have been his last race in high school while Hawthorne has next year to try again.
“I definitely felt worse [than last race],” Carilli said. “The weather was not on our side today. It was much drier and the fact that it was Halloween last night didn’t help much. If it is my last race [of my high school career], I definetly think that it was appropriate. I think I tried my best.”
“I hope it’s not my last race,” Hawthorne said. “On a technicality I may be going to CCS. We did rather poorly, what went wrong was … we had a headwind on the two mile … [among other things]. I improved, which I suppose is good, but other than that we could have done a lot better.”
For other runners who know that their season is over the end is bittersweet.
“This is my last race,” Hall said. “I’m really, really happy because this has been an amazing experience for me, you know, getting to run all these years and I’m just so happy with myself for where I’ve come. I didn’t even run this course my sophomore year, I was vomiting. Last year people were fainting on the course so I didn’t get to run so I’m glad I got to race and I had a lot of fun. I wish I’d done better and I wish the team was going to CCS, but it was a hard day and I think we all performed really well in the conditions we were under.”
Zhang and May still have next year to try again and hope they will make it to CCS, with better conditions.
“I felt like I did just about as good as I did at the last race,” Zhang said. “Which was alright because the last race the conditions were really good, there wasn’t much wind, it was kind of raining a little bit so the weather was cool. But I’m still kind of disappointed in myself because we had some expectations and we didn’t really reach them. I had this goal in the beginning of the season, I was hoping we would make CCS. I saw a huge amount of potential, but there were a bunch of other factors. Matan didn’t really get back into shape [after his injury] and bad weather today. But there’s nothing we can do about that , we just have to try harder next year. I think we’ll have a pretty good shot.”
“I wanted to do better,” May said. “But for the conditions today I thought it was okay. I don’t think the sun affected me as much as the wind, the wind was really bad. Not really because it slows you down a little bit, but it makes it a lot harder because you get dehydrated. It ended my season pretty well, it gives me a lot of margin to improve. I’m excited for next year.”
“I wanted to do well here, kind of go out with a bang,” Solgaard said. “I have one more chance to do better than I’ve done here and hopefully I can prove myself then, and if not, that’s all right too.”
