After swelling their ranks with new underclassmen runners, the Paly girls’ varsity cross-country team is sure to face tough competition this season. After losing top senior racers Renata Cummins and Alicia Ivanhoe, new as well as returning varsity runners are working hard to continue Paly’s tradition of a strong cross country team.

“This year we are almost a completely new team,” head coach Paul Jones said. “We will keep improving and we’ll probably have our best results towards the end of the season.”

All Paly cross country teams participated in a preseason meet early Friday afternoon, where they ran head to head with neighboring schools Gunn, St. Francis and Castilleja. Gunn and St. Francis had four runners apiece place in the top ten.

“Gunn and St. Francis are contending to be two of the best teams in the state, so going up against them was more of a challenge then what we’ll see throughout the rest of the season,” Jones said.

Senior Leah Gaeta was the first Viking runner to cross the finish line with a time of 14:26; good for 11th overall. Following her closely were Paly sophomore Regina Wang (14:31), juniors Gillian Lui (14:38), Elizabeth Scott (14:46), Grace Park (14:50), and Jessica Kuo (15:01).

Despite these competitive times, some of the girls are noticing a change in the teams’ abilities from last year’s squad. During previous seasons, the team depended heavily on the performance of several top runners. With these losses, all of the girls have stepped up their training in order to fill in these vacancies.

“Last year we had a few top runners, like Renata (Cummins) and Alicia (Ivanhoe) who were getting top times and really pushing the team along, while this year we have a lot of good runners at about the same speed,” Scott said. “We’ve all been working really hard.”

Due to the amount of inexperience on the new team, many runners are looking forward to the season as a time to improve and secure their position on the team.

“This year the team is made up mostly of juniors and underclassmen, so we have a lot of time to improve,” Kuo said. “But we have some depth in abilities, so we should still be competitive this year.”

The girls’ first challenge will be in San Francisco, where the Lowell meet is hosted. Since Lowell is the girls first real meet, much anticipation surrounds the upcoming obstacle.

“[Lowell] will really be an indicator for where the team stands ability wise,” Jones said.

The Lowell meet will start at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, Sep. 22 in Golden Gate Park.