Reporting by Cooper Wong and Stephanie Lin.
On March 19 and March 24, Aragon’s girls cross country team (4-1 overall) and boys cross country team (5-0 overall) had their last meets of the season against Hillsdale, Capuchino and San Mateo.
During the race on March 19, senior runner Blaine Reynolds snagged first place by a solid margin, with senior Samuel Pappas following in second. Aragon’s boys team had the first, second and third spots on the podium, and runners from Hillsdale and San Mateo followed behind.
Throughout most of the race, Reynolds and Pappas kept the same positions and maintained their positions as first and second place.
“I didn’t run quite as well as I did last time we ran this course, but I was happy with the result,” Reynolds said.
Pappas had a similar outlook on his performance during this meet.
”I did alright,” Pappas said. “I didn’t do as well as my last time, but I’m still content with it.”
Even though junior Caitlin Clark, senior Niyati Reddy and junior Natalie Teng placed second, third and fourth in their race, the girls team only had four runners, which made it impossible to win because the point system in cross country requires five runners.
During this race, Clark and a Hillsdale runner were running head to head until the third lap, where the Hillsdale runner broke away from Clark. Reddy and Teng maintained third and fourth place throughout the race and were consistently ahead of the others.
“In our three races the girls have performed outstanding[ly],” said Coach Frank Hunt. “We won the first two races [against] Mills and Burlingame. It was unfortunate that we didn’t have a complete team. … We probably would have won if we had five runners.”
During the March 24 meet, Reynolds came in first with a time of 12:05 and a pace of 5:10 minutes per mile. Following him in second place was Pappas coming in at 12:43 with a pace of 5:25 minutes per mile.
Clark placed highest in the girls team, coming in first with a time of 15:00 and a pace of 6:23 minutes per mile. Reddy took second place with a time of 15:58 and a pace of 6:48 minutes per mile.
Typically there would be more races, but due to the pandemic, there have been far fewer in order to limit students’ contact with other people.
“We only have four races this year when typically in the Peninsula Athletic League alone we have three races plus a championship,” Hunt said. “On the weekends we typically went to invitational races around the Bay Area, so we end up usually with a schedule of nine to 11 races.”
The team has put in a lot of work during training despite how difficult it is to run in masks. They are happy to be able to compete against other schools, but also understand that the special circumstances make it difficult to have more and larger matches such as the championships.
“We’re not suffering [alone],” Hunt said. “There are a lot of people that are suffering greater things than losing a couple of meets to their schedule, but it didn’t really affect our training. You’re trained to run, and the meets are the fruition for the week.”
Despite challenges faced by student athletes participating in sports this year, the team has been able to grow closer as a group.
“I think the most outstanding thing was the closeness we were able to make as a team community,” Reynolds said. “Even though we weren’t allowed to be within six feet [of each other], we still were close as a team. We all worked together and worked hard to get to our season and [get] the results [we] needed.”
As cross country wrapped up for the season, the team was grateful for being able to have meets and the memorable experience this year had to offer.
“It was nice to run with everyone, one last time,” Reddy said.
