On April 18, Aragon hosted the final home meet of the official track and field season against Carlmont High School. The varsity boys, varsity girls, and frosh-soph boys defeated Carlmont with respective scores of 78-53, 66-59, and 77-59; frosh-soph girls lost with a score of 52-74.
Some cited the coach-selected Top 8 meet held the following day as the reason for the easier victory. Several key Carlmont runners were excused from the Aragon meet so they could rest for the Top 8 meet.
Says head coach Bill Daskarolis, “I think [Carlmont is] undefeated in boys. We’re actually pretty good head to head. We were hoping that our kids would run well because it was the last home meet for our seniors.”
Thus far, the varsity boys have been undefeated. The varsity girls and frosh-soph boys teams have each lost one meet. The girls frosh-soph team has lost two meets.
Says Daskarolis, “The varsity girls have only lost one meet, and the big reason is because we have the talent, we just don’t have the numbers. At the frosh-soph level, the girls lost two meets and the boys lost one meet.”
Assistant coach Asif Rahman agrees. “We have a lot of returning athletes on the varsity boys and girls team from last year. The boys are especially good because we’ve got so many boys on the team. We don’t have a lot of girls, but the girls we have are very good. [The varsity girls] lost to Westmoor simply because they just had more girls than we did, and although we won more events and all the girls that were supposed to do really well all performed really well, we still lost the meet because we simply didn’t have enough kids running.”
Adds Daskarolis, “It’s because of the numbers. [The varsity girls] actually had more first places, but they had more second and third places to make up the difference.”
Additionally, there are several new coaches this season.
Says Rahman, “We’ve got coach Mike Wu from the football team. He runs our weight conditioning program, which has really been a huge help. He’s there five days a week in the weight room helping from distance all the way to sprinters and jumpers and hurdles. And we also have Coach Dixon who comes out once a week to help kids with the hurdles.”
History teacher Ron Berggren also joined the team as a coach.
Since there are 16 different types of events (including sprinting, long distance, hurdles, middle distance, vertical jumps, and horizontal jumps), runners train separately.
Says Daskarolis, “The team is a lot like a family that has responsibilities around the house. Someone does the dishes, someone sets the table, etc. Everybody does their job and they all contribute to the team. What you want is a team that can control all of the events well, and when they do, they have a championship team, and that’s what’s happening to our boys varsity team this year.”
Adds sophomore Jennifer Saldana, “We each train differently, and we have different aspects to fix. We have different ways to start, and different events need different training. We practice separately, but we are a team and we get along very well.”
The team’s goal this season is to win both the dual meet and PAL event championships.
Says Rahman, “Last year we won the PAL championship at the meet. It should be really competitive this season, at least I’m hoping. The goal is to win all four trophies. There’s a dual meet championship, and then there’s the PAL event championship. Last year, the varsity boys were undefeated in the dual meets, but they lost the PAL championship by three points, and that would have been the first time in 17 years the boys won a championship. This year we’re hoping to do it, and it’s obviously going to be the first time in 18 years if we do. The girls last season lost two dual meets, but they won the PAL championship, so that was really exciting.”
Concludes Rahman, “We always go through rebuilding, but if you look at the current crop of frosh-soph athletes, both boys and girls, we’re going to be really good in the future. There are some really talented athletes coming up in the frosh-soph ranks. It’s quite exciting, you never know what’s going to happen, but I would have to say I’m very enthusiastic about the future. The next two or three years should also be really good.”
