Despite damp and drizzly weather, many members of Paly’s girls’ cross country team exceeded their expectations after their first invitational at Golden Gate Park on Saturday morning.
“The girls ran better than I had expected,” girls’ head coach Paul Jones said. “The team is really solid.”
Both the varsity and junior varsity teams placed fourth overall, each in a field of 16 teams, while the frosh/soph team placed third overall against 10 other teams.
Senior co-captain Elizabeth Scott, Paly’s first varsity runner to finish, completed the wet, hilly 2.93-mile-long course in 18 minutes, 29 seconds. Next was junior Kathleen Higgins, who came in at 19:34, senior co-captain Gillian Lui, who finished at 19:38, junior Regina Wang at 20:19, and senior co-captains Sarah Haydock, Grace Park, and Jessie Kuo at 20:38, 20:53, and 22:00 respectively.
Jones pointed out notable improvements from the team, such as from Scott, Lui, Higgins, and sophomore Gracie Cain, who raced in the frosh/soph division.
“I was really surprised,” Scott said, “I had set a goal of 18:45 before the race, and I thought that was already too ambitious because I ran 20:50 last year. I went out in the front of the pack and settled in…and I was really happy that I made my goal.”
Higgins, who finished a little behind Scott, came in second with an impressive 1 minute, 18 second improvement from last year.
“I’ve actually had better races because I was sleepy this morning,” Higgins said, “but it was still really good.”
Cain came in second overall with a time of 14:37 for the shorter 2.13-mile frosh/soph race, despite some confusion that first-place Courtney Destailla from Aptos raised after accidentally cutting through a large section of the course.
“[My race] felt good,” Cain said. “I don’t think I was in as much pain as the Gunn race two weeks ago, but [the end of the course] was really misleading.”
Mountain View was the only other team racing on Saturday who is in the same league as Paly. Although in a different league, Aptos, another one of the stronger teams at Lowell, will compete against Paly only if both teams make it to CCS.
“We got our butts kicked by Mountain View, but that was expected,” Jones said. “The point of these meets is to see who should be qualified for junior varsity and varsity in the meets that do matter.”
Jones mentioned that the team could have performed better if some members of the frosh/soph team had not been absent. Suzan Heinselman, who was sick, could have very likely pushed the frosh/soph team to second place, a position which would’ve given the girls team medals. Also, a few frosh/soph runners missed their race because they were waiting in the bathroom line when the race began, and thus had to be switched to the JV race. This caused the loss of several important runners in the frosh/soph race, according to Jones.
“It’s just little learning things,” Jones said.
The girls will race again in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League Preview at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 23, in Santa Clara’s Central Park.