Paly’s varsity boys’ track and field team started its 2008 season with a bang, trouncing the Mountain View High School Spartans, 80-47, in its first league meet of its season Thursday.
Although the Spartans moved up to the stronger De Anza Division of the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League this year, their newfound league position proved to be no challenge for the Vikings, veterans of the upper league. Claiming two of the top three spots in all but three of the individual events, the Vikings handily dominated the scoreboard Thursday.
“They [Mountain View] were good, but there wasn’t anything we were having real problems with,” junior distance runner Skyler Cummins said.
The boys proved their talent first in the opening event of the meet, the 400-meter relay. With first leg sophomore Daniel Jones sprinting straight off the blocks into a comfortable early lead over Mountain View, the relay team clocked in a first place finish at 45.0 seconds. The varsity boys were Paly’s only 400-meter relay team to finish its race Thursday, as the varsity girls and both junior varsity teams all were disqualified for faulty hand-offs.
Four running events later, Jones again took first place, this time in the 100-meter sprint at 11.1 seconds. Another three running events after that, Jones placed first once more with a 23.0 second finish in the 200.
“It feels nice to actually win something for a change,” Jones said. “Last year, I was getting second, third, fourth place, so I’m feeling pretty good right now.”
Jones raked in 15 points Thursday finishing first in three events, the highest score any varsity boy contributed to the team’s total.
Junior Pascal Truninger, an exchange student from Switzerland, garnered a generous 13 points for the team Thursday night. Participating in the 110- and 300-meter hurdles, long jump, and discus, Truninger earned first place finishes in the 110 hurdles at 16.6 seconds and long jump at 18 feet, 6.5 inches, second place in the 300 hurdles at 44.8 seconds, and fourth place in the discus with a throw of 108 feet, 10.5 inches.
Truninger describes his performance Thursday as “not good, not bad.” Nevertheless, he feels that, while he did compete well in all four of his events, he could have accomplished much more if only those events were more spaced out.
“I’d like to have more time between events,” Truninger said. “I would do better with more time and more focus.”
Paly’s varsity boys who ran the longer distance races also fared well against the Spartans. Seniors Willie Xiang and Erik Roberts placed second and third respectively in the 400, while sophomore Philip MacQuitty came in first in the 800 at 2 minutes, 4 seconds, outrunning Mountain View sophomore Garrett Rowe by four seconds. In the 1,600, senior Julius Berezin earned third place with a time of 4:37. Paly juniors controlled the 3,200 Thursday, with Charlie Avis and Cummins crossing the finish line in first and third place at 9:53 and 10:07 respectively. Full results can be found at http://www.dyestatcal.com/ATHLETICS/TRACK/2008/2008.htm
After their convincing win over the Spartans Thursday night, the varsity track and field boys hope to continue their early season momentum into putting up a second dual meet win next week.
“Next week, it’s going down,” Cummins said, suggesting the confidence with which the boys will face Monta Vista High School after school March 13 at the Paly track.