A CCS trip last Saturday capped off another successful season of track and field for the boys and girls varsity teams.
The team played a stacked schedule of both head-to-head events and prestigious invitationals. Paly excelled in both distance races and sprints. On the boys side, Grant Morganfield (‘24), Tony Mckenna (‘24), Stefan Sochacki (‘25), and Tristan Kippes (‘25) were elite long-distance runners for the Vikings. Kinga Czajkowska (‘25) and Amaya Bharadwaj (‘26) were stand-out distance runners for the girls as well.
For sprints, Kyle Li (‘24) and Aidan McGraw (‘24) headlined the boys, while Kailia Leming (‘26), Kate Skeen (‘26), Lillia Kuzmicheva (‘26), and Julie Yang (‘27) led the charge for the girls.
Having runners with a wide diversity of skill sets for both the girl’s and boys’ teams helped Paly succeed throughout the season.
A common theme throughout the season was the constant bad weather runners faced during meets.
“The season was overall pretty long because it started early,” junior Izzy Biename said. “Most of our meets were rainy and windy so they weren’t great.”
Even through the bad weather, both the girls and boys teams found ways to make the season fun and successful.
“I had a lot of good personal records and a majority of people had a good season,” Biename said.
Sprinter Kyle Li’s favorite moment of the season was a win against Gunn, because of all the trash they talked prior to the event.
“[Gunn] kept chirping at us before the meet, so it was nice to get a quality win against a rival who clearly expected a different result,” Li said.
Although the team had many successful individual runners, they didn’t do as well as they may have liked.
“[The girls] lost all of the home meets but everyone gave it their best,” Biename said.
At CCS last Saturday, star runner Grant Morganfield placed first in the 3200m and second in the 1600m final for the boys. Another one of Paly’s strongest relays – the Girls 4×4 – made it to the CCS final.
Overall, the team hopes to survive key losses like Morganfield, and take the good moments from the season by improving upon them even more next year.
