After strong individual performances at their first three meets and rigorous training during the start of this year’s season, Paly’s varsity cross country boys have taken the significance of teamwork to a new level. They built on the strengths of their teammates in Saturday’s widely attended Stanford Invitational to win a 10th overall team finish.
The Stanford Cross Country Invitational, held on five kilometers of trails around the Stanford Golf Course, attracted many of the top running teams in the nation, with additional schools traveling from as far as New Zealand to participate. The Division II varsity race and the JV race featured 32 and 38 schools, respectively.
In the Division II varsity race, junior Philip MacQuitty was the first from Paly to finish, placing third out of 236 runners with a time of 15 minutes, 55 seconds. Junior Josh Newby was second from Paly and took a commendable 40th place overall in his first time running the course, while senior Skyler Cummins, 58th place overall, set a 41-second personal record at 17:29. Junior Peter Wilson came in at 17:39, followed by junior Henry Jordan, senior Colin Schmitt, and junior Ben Sklaroff.
The team finally overcame last season’s disappointment of missing the opportunity to advance to states and succeeded in beating Los Gatos and Los Altos, who claimed 12th and 30th team finishes, respectively.
Junior Andrew Stober led the Paly JV runners at 18:31, finishing 62nd overall out of 268 JV boys from all five divisions. Juniors Alex Voet and Philip Chen, the next two Paly boys, placed 73rd and 108th, respectively, at 18:41 and 19:09. Overall, the JV boys finished 20th in their division, comfortably ahead of Los Altos at 35th.
In spite of the satisfying results, the Vikings agree that Saturday’s race was one of the toughest and most competitive they have had on this course. Some of the boys, including Jordan, struggled with previous injuries that had never completely recovered but still retain a positive attitude about the outcome of the race.
“I didn’t know at first if I would run this race or not,” Jordan said. “I guess I just didn’t get in the zone today. I warmed up well, started well, but towards the end my IT band started hurting. It happens to everybody…and there was a lot of pushing and shoving the whole time. It was a pretty cool race though, since a lot of guys did really well.”
According to boys’ head coach Joe Ginanni, the record hot weather was also an issue, but the tight-knit varsity group faced the competition and finished strong.
“I think everyone struggled with the heat,” Ginanni said. “We have some lessons to learn about preparing, but in general it was a fun meet and a good team-building experience. In this time of year, the boys are starting to really come together as a squad.”
Newby also cites teamwork as a crucial part of Saturday’s success.
“For the last two meets, the varsity team has worked exceptionally well together,” Newby said. “We stayed in a pack for most of Lowell, and Skyler [Cummins] and I ran together for the whole race today. He paced me the whole way.”
If all goes as planned, the boys will continue to train hard, develop as a group, and use their teamwork to their advantage at the upcoming Crystal Springs race on Oct. 2.
“The whole Paly team has really been working hard the past few weeks,” Newby said. “I’m confident that our team is going to do really well because of how hard everyone has been working.”