Menlo’s cross country team has had a running start to their season with the boys sweeping competition at the Woodbridge Classic and the girls having a top-tier performance at the Lowell Invitational. 

The girls placed second overall at Lowell. In the De La Salle Nike Invitational, they placed sixth among 28 teams. The roster has an addition of three new girls, bolstering an already strong community and collection of mile times. 

In girls head coach Sally Hauser’s opinion, the core group competing this year connects just as well inside and outside of practice and their recent success can be attributed to these relationships. A key component of this community are the captains of the team, junior Ariya Kaushek and senior Veronica Taira. The girls team introduced captains this season and, according to Hauser, they have helped the younger teammates with their mentalities and enthusiasm. 

“While both [Kaushek and Taira] are the one and two runners while racing, their biggest role is leading,” Hauser said. “The assistant coach, Marissa, and I communicated early in July with the girls about their role, and they have really committed to it.” The team is ready to dedicate these next weeks to preparing for the league finals in November. “The ultimate goal is to go to states and place in that top ten,” Hauser said. 

As for the boys side, the Knights had an impressive performance at Woodbridge Classic even though they were placed in Division IV since Woodbridge was their first race of the season. On Friday, in the three mile race, senior Landon Pretre ran 14:16, winning the DIV race, to set the bar for his four teammates’ top 13 performances. 

The day after, when Division I and II competed, Menlo found out their time contested higher divisions’ competition, making them the ninth fastest team in the whole event and the fastest of all California teams. “We were not expecting [being the fastest California team]. We were trying to go for being in the top five California teams,” Pretre said. They also beat any previous DIV teams in the meet’s history.

Even though California is the deepest state of cross country talent, Pretre has big hopes for the team this year including reaching Nike Cross Nationals (NXN). “We should dominate the state meet with all of us healthy. We have gone in these past three years just a little bit short,” Pretre said. “With the potential of how good our [runners] can be, making NXN would be super big.”