With a lack of experienced athletes, the girls’ track team started its season with a mediocre performance, losing to the Los Altos Eagles on Thursday, 29-98.
“For the girls’ team, we have some holes still that we need to fill,” girls’ head coach Jason Fung said. “I think overall, the first time out, a lot of them have never ran a high school track meet. We have some stuff to work on in filling the individual events, such as finding the core group of girls for jumping instead of guessing who is jumping.”
The meet started with the 400-meter relay, which consisted of juniors Erika Hoglund and Emily Yeates, sophomore Rayonna Adams, and senior Julia Benton. The Vikings held a strong lead over the Eagles before a staggered hand-off between the third and fourth leg, which gave the Eagles a slight lead at the finish line.
The race was the first time the 400-meter relay team had practiced handing off together, so Benton feels that the team performed well despite the loss.
“In past years, we have always lost to Los Altos by quite a lot,” Benton said. “This year we were pretty close even with the bad hand-off.”
In the long distance events, the Vikings had a more experienced team. In the 1600-meter event, senior Elizabeth Scott clocked 5 minutes, 37 seconds for third place, followed by junior Regina Wang with a time of 5:43 and senior Sarah Haydock at 5:58. In the 3200-meter event, the only varsity runner for the Vikings was junior Kathleen Higgins, who completed the event in 12 minutes, 9 seconds, just 3 seconds slower than her personal record from the end of the Spring 2008 track season. Higgins placed third in the event.
“I was really pleased today,” girls’ distance coach Paul Jones said. “We had a lot of almost PR’s [personal records] today, which is great for the first race of the season.”
No Viking athlete raced in the varsity 200-meter and 400-meter events, and this gave the Eagles an 18-point lead. Fung is not sure why nobody competed in the 200-meter event, and girls’ mid-distance coach Lisa Chin said she wanted to observe the performance of the athletes in a real race before deciding who would run in the varsity division of the 400-meter event late on in the season.
In the junior varsity division of the 400, sophomore Melanie Brenton won with a time of 1 minute, 7 seconds; sophomore Jodi So finished in 1:12; and junior Natasha Haris finished in 1:18. Chin anticipates that these runners will be the likely candidates for the varsity team.
As pointed out by Fung, the team lacked a group of girls who could perform in the jumping events. The only consistent member on Thursday was Hoglund, who jumped solo in both the triple jump and long jump. Hogland placed third in the triple jump with a distance of 30 feet, 11.5 inches and placed first in the high jump with a distance of 16-00.00. In the high jump, Yeates and junior Lea Eaton placed second and third with a distance of 4-05.00 and 4-00.00, respectively.
Girls’ hurdle coach Allye Mullins said she was impressed by the girls’ hurdle results. In the 100-meter hurdles, Eaton, freshman Ana Zander, and senior Sylvia Price placed third, forth, and fifth respectively. Exact times for the event were not recorded due to an error in the computerized timer used.
In the 300-meter hurdles, Price won with a time of 49 seconds, and Zander placed third with a time of 52 seconds.
“I was really impressed by Sylvia’s time,” Mullins said. “She may have done better than she did at the end of last season. I would expect that kind of time at the end of this season.”
The girls will race at 3 p.m. on Thursday, March 19, against Mountain View High School at the Mountain View High School track.