In a classic Palo Alto showdown that pitted green jerseys against red, both Paly’s varsity and junior varsity cross country boys trounced the Gunn Titans, Tuesday, during the Palo Alto City Championships.

At last year’s City Championships meet, Paly’s varsity boys earned a team score of 36, ultimately falling to Gunn, who secured a team score of 23. Naturally, entering the meet against Gunn this year, Paly team members had their eyes firmly set on the prize.

“It’s always different running with Gunn because we’re cross-town rivals; we always want to beat them,” senior varsity runner Jeremy Jacob said.

According to senior co-captain Rajan Narang, the San Jose Mercury News ranked Gunn’s boys’ team ahead of Paly’s before Tuesday’s meet, but the cross country Vikings refused to settle below the Titans. To ensure that the varsity team would come out of the race with the title of City Champs, senior co-captain Brian Hsueh said that the varsity members discussed methods of competing prior to the start of the 2.18-mile-long run.

“Before the race, the team got together to plan on how to get each individual Gunn runner and how to strategically race,” Hsueh said.

As a result, senior co-captain Alok Subbarao was optimistic about the meet’s results.

“I thought that both varsity and junior varsity had really good chances of doing well,” Subbarao said.

And “doing well” is exactly what they did.

It was Paly’s varsity boys’ team that brought back a collective score of 23 this year, beating out Gunn’s team score of 34. Sophomore Phil MacQuitty once again led the pack, this time consisting of 17 total runners, to finish first overall with a time of 10 minutes, 43 seconds. According to boys’ head coach Jeff Billing, MacQuitty clocked in the fastest sophomore time and third overall fastest time in the course’s history.

Junior Charlie Avis claimed second place overall at 11:01, which is the 16th fastest time taken to complete the course in its history. Following him were seniors Brian Karvelas and Julius Berezin at a fourth-place 11:11 and seventh-place 11:19 respectively. Next came a herd of Paly green from junior Skyler Cummins at 11:30 and seniors Sam Jones at 11:35, Gilbert Choi at 11:37, Jacob at 11:41, Hsueh at 11:48, and Narang at 11:50. Paly only allowed one Gunn runner to cross the finish line between Cummins and Narang.

The junior varsity boys also fared well against Gunn, dominating the race by earning 21 points as its team score over Gunn’s 40. Junior Colin Schmitt, who finished in an overall first-place 12:03, led the junior varsity squad Tuesday. After Schmitt came seniors Wes Duplantier at 12:14, Willie Xiang at 12:18, Henry Becker at 12:24, Alfred Chen at 12:30, and both Subbarao and junior Erik Klingbeil at 12:31. Fifteen of the top 20 junior varsity boys at the meet Tuesday donned a Paly jersey.

With both junior varsity and varsity teams having soundly defeated Gunn’s boys’ teams, the group looks towards next week’s league meet to continue its success. Narang believes the boys’ overall performance Tuesday heralds positive results at the league meet.

“This is a big confidence booster for leagues,” Narang said. “We’re right where we need to be at this point in the season.”

The league meet is set for Tuesday, Oct. 30 at the Crystal Springs course in Belmont.