Brianna Ganzon
The annual MC cross country invite was held September 21st at Balboa Park.
Junior Anna Joel, well on her way in becoming a cross country varsity member, explains that the team worked hard to set up the meet.
“There was a lot of dedication involved, and even in the days prior to it no one gets to leave [and] everyone has to participate in helping,” Joel said. “On the day of the invite people immediately got to work and if the coach wanted us to do anything we would do it.”
Junior and varsity runner Garrett De Long elaborates on the work done prior to the meet.
“There was a lot of preparation work before the meet, like on Fridays we had to help pack the U-Haul truck to get all the supplies there,” De Long said.
In addition to hosting, the MC varsity team placed highly in many of the events.
De Long placed second in the 2.95 mile Junior Boys race, with a time of 16:00, and feels that the team excelled overall.
“I feel the varsity team did very well, most of our seniors placed top five in their race and the juniors won their race,” De Long said.
Joel feels the varsity team gave a solid performance, emphasizing that the girls’ performance was especially strong.
“For our varsity team, I think we did really well. I mean, there are strong schools and everything, but I feel with the strength that we had we did the best we can do and we [junior girls] placed second, which I still think is very great,” Joel said. “I know that all the girls always pushed until the very end and I believe in that.”
Senior varsity member Astrid Ccapatinta finished with a time of 18:32 in the 2.75 mile Senior Girls race, placing 39 out of 140.
“I actually don’t know [what I placed] but I got a medal though. It was [the] top sixty that got a medal,” Ccapatinta said.
At the meet, there were a total of 103 schools present, further split into two divisions. To some of the athletes, certain schools stood out.
Ccapatinta personally thinks that Westview was a challenging competitor.
“There were a lot of schools there, but [among the most challenging was] probably Westview because they are our rival,” Ccapatinta said.
De Long agrees and believes Westview provides strong competition.
“They have a strong top five runners on the team,” De Long said.
Joel, however, feels that there was no single challenging competitor.
“I heard Rancho Bernardo and Westview got really strong, but honestly I feel like it varies every year,” Joel said. “But at the same time, we’re doing our own training so it doesn’t really intimidate us.”
