Paly boys’ cross-country finished fifth, fourth, fourth and sixth at the Crystal Springs Preview Meet on Oct. 6. The 2.93 mile race was split up by grade, with the freshmen racing first and the seniors last.
Finishing first for Paly in the freshman race with a time of 18 minutes and 23.5 seconds was Andrew Wilson (’15). Wilson placed 16th overall. The other four members of the freshman team who helped determine the teams’ score were Rick Takeuchi (’15), Nihat Pol (’15), Nate Cook (’15) and Bryan Wong (’15), who placed 20th, 39th, 42nd and 44th respectively with times of 18:35.8, 19:31.5, 19:41.5 and 19:42.0. The Crystal Springs course starts off with a steep downhill which runners then must loop around and go back up before finishing the remainder of the hilly course.
“The first part was better than the second,” Wilson said. “The first mile we went way too fast.”
Takeuchi agreed, saying that he wanted to get under 6:10 minute mile pace for the next race at Crystal.
“That was the longest cross-country race I’ve ever (done), Takeuchi said. ” Overall I did pretty well … but there’s such a long way to go. The thing I think I need to work on, for the first mile I need to make sure I run a steady pace rather than running too fast.”
In the sophomore race, runners Sam Mignot (’14), Jasper Tom (’14), Jackson Hansen (’14), Sean Keegan (’14) and Jensen Hsiao (’14) ran for the Vikings’ fourth-place score of 103 and a combined time of one hour, 30 minutes and 40 seconds. Monte Vista won with a score of 66 and a team time of 1:28:48.1.
The sophomore runners echoed the freshmen with their wishes for better pacing.
“The race was interesting, Gavin Libbey (’14) said. “I definetly want to keep my consistency up, from the first mile to the rest of it.”
The juniors also placed fourth out of the 14 teams running, with Ben Hawthorne (’13) running a 17:43.0 to place first for Paly and 19th overall. Following Hawthorne were runners Justin Zhang (’13), Nathan Hechtman (’13), Matan Geller (’13) and Kevin Lavelle (’13) with times of 17:50.7, 18:09.1, 18:13.4 and 18:17.8 and overall places of 21st, 26th, 27th and 29th.
“I think we did well considering the fact that none of us ran as fast as we could have ran,” Hawthorne said. “We took it easy … I was sick, I’m sure some other people were sick. But even so, we got fourth overall and the varsity team qualified for CCS (Central Coast Sectionals) even though we were running easy.”
Senior Vikings placed sixth with runners Nikolai Solgaard (’12), Sam Carilli (’12), William Hall (’12), Sam Asin (’12) and Nick Forlenza (’12) placing. Solgaard placed 8th overall and first for the team with a time of 16:14.7. Carilli ran 17:00.1 for a 16th place overall, followed by Hall in 27th place, Asin in 41st and Forlenza in 48th with times of 17:50.5, 18:45.2 and 19:01.3.
“I felt great,” Carilli said. “I guess we did very well seeing as we qualified (for CCS). We all ran faster (than last year) … Hopefully there will be better weather next time, it was rather chilly.”
The Vikings’ next race will be varsity only on Oct. 10 at the Cal Poly Invitational.