For the first time in 11 years, the Cross Country Team advanced to CIF finals.
While this is a landmark achievement for the school, it almost never happened as the team nearly failed to qualify for CIF entirely. They needed a strong performance in league finals, which entailed beating Monrovia. However, the team ended up losing by 6 points, which despite the loss, was still the closest they had been to beating them all season. However, since the cross country team was ranked in the top 13 of their division for two weeks, they got the at-large bid to CIF preliminaries.
At CIF prelims, the team needed to get top 5 in their heat to qualify for finals despite having juggernauts like Saint Francis High School and Junipero Serra High School. The team’s top 5 guys, Essien Gagnan-Welch, 12, Sean Tsai, 9, Charlie McDermott, 10, Howard Chen, 12, and Zachary Fong, 10, went out gutsy at the start and they had the 5th place score after both miles after miles #1 and 2. However, some of the team’s frontrunners began dropping places towards the end of mile #3. Fortunately for the team, heroics came from their 4th man Howard Chen, who climbed 23 places throughout the race and the team ended up finishing 5th. “Everyone thinks cross country is an individual sport, but when you’re exhausted at the foot of a nasty hill at CIF, you think about your teammates and you start to work through your pain for them. TI’m so proud of our team for going farther than the Titans have in over a decade; this is a result of discipline, raw ambition, and a love for running” Varsity member Jeremy Karkafi, 12, said.
At finals, the team did not have a spectacularly noteworthy performance and finished 16th. However, there were many individual performances that shocked the team. “Remarkably, Howard went from 112th (4th to last) at the mile split to 75th at the finish, passing 37 other CIF finalists in the last 2 miles. I think a big spotlight should also be placed on our freshman Sean Tsai, who got 73rd at CIF Finals running a 17:22 despite only being in 9th grade,” Karkafi finished.
