The Palo Alto High School track and field teams are looking forward to the Central Coast Section Semi Finals Saturday at San Jose City College.
The Paly boys finished the league season (2-4) and placed second in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League meet May 16th at Santa Clara High School, while the girls finished up with a record of 4-2 in the league and placed sixth at the league meet.
Both teams will send their 1600-meter and 400-meter relay teams to the meet, along with several individual qualifiers.
Senior sprinter Nick Sullivan is looking forward to facing new competition at the meet.
“I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” Sullivan said. “I’m probably most excited just to have some competition in the 400 meter dash. I haven’t really had any in our league all year.”
Sullivan is coming off of a record setting performance at the SCVAL meet, running a 21.72 in the 200 meter dash and breaking a meet record previously held by Paly alumnus E.J. Floreal (’13). However, Sullivan knows there is still room for improvement.
“My goals are to just get a personal record in all my events,” Sullivan said. “I’m going all out and we will see what I can do.”
The boys’ team has had to rely on a young team this year led by Sophomore sprinter Eli Givens who believes he has a good chance to win the 100 meter dash.
“I think I can win the one,” Givens said. “I just have to have a good race and get out of my blocks fast and with that, I should have a pretty good chance to win the race.”
According to Senior sprinter Jessica Branson, the girls’ team is very excited to be running against top competition in the championship meet.
“Our favorite thing about CCS is that there are so many talented athletes there to watch,” Branson said. “It’s fun to race against them. Track can be a team sport or an individual sport, and that is why it’s super cool.”
Branson is excited for an opportunity for the team to improve on its results from last year.
“I’m looking forward to hopefully beating our current record in the 400- meter relay which is 49.34 seconds,” Branson said. “We also want to try and place higher than we finished last year.”
The meet will start at 2 p.m. on Saturday at San Jose City College. The finals for CCS will be held at 4 p.m. next Friday at San Jose City College.