The Palo Alto High School track and field team continues to dominate, defeating Homestead High School on Thursday at home.

Despite missing several senior athletes due to a band trip, both the girls’ and the boys’ teams were successful. The girls’ team won 10 out of 15 events and the boys’ team took 13 out of 15.

“I think the team did wonderfully,” freshman Henry Saul said. “We had a band trip so we lost a lot of our varsity, but I think a lot of frosh-soph runners really picked it up.”

Standouts included junior Kent Slaney, who placed first in the 1600- and 3200-meter races while also competing in the 4×400-meter relay and sophomore Darby Felter who placed first in both the 110-meter hurdles and 300-meter hurdles.

According to junior Titi Bolarinwa, the weather and the early lead over Homestead in addition to the absence of a significant portion of runners allowed the team to experiment with different events.

“It’s really warm out so it’s way different from last meet which was pouring rain,” Bolarinwa said. “It’s a lot of firsts for a lot of people, because it’s against Homestead so we could experiment a lot with this meet.”

These conditions gave younger runners the opportunity to step up and prove themselves to the team, and allowed older runners to try out events they normally wouldn’t run.

The teams’ next meet is against Milpitas High School at 3:15 p.m. next Thursday at Milpitas High School.