Los Altos takes on the state track meet
Seventeen Los Altos High School athletes traveled to Fresno for the state track championships this weekend. Here’s a quick recap.
Thursday afternoon
Jake’s mom decorates all three cars we take up to the meet (a lot more artistically than I recall our decorations for the Clovis XC trip in the fall). I’m with Jake, Megan, Ella, Jenna and Cam in a minivan driven by Peter — husband of Coach Steph, father of Megan — and we all have a sing-along blast, though I suspect the blast might be more of an annoyance for Peter.
Thursday evening
We make a pit stop at the Los Banos Chipotle for dinner. Maddy brings her own vegetarian rice pasta 🙄. Our car poses for a group photo that I’ve been given specific instructions not to share… but I think it’s kind of cute.
Thursday night
We finally arrive at the hotel after a three-hour drive.
Steph holds a quick team meeting to go over tomorrow’s logistics, which Shawn and Braden miss, of course. Jake and Nathaniel are definitely not paying attention. I’m rooming with Jake, and I try to convince him that we should spoon in the same bed even though we have two in our room. He declines.
Friday morning
Rise and shine… We’re in no particular rush to get anywhere because the meet doesn’t actually start until around 5 p.m. It’s also right around now that Cam realizes she forgot her running shoes — which are, like, the one thing she needed to bring. She’s in her lavender Birks until she can go get new sneakers at a sporting goods store.
Even though the meet doesn’t start till later tonight, we’re up at around 8 to get in a shakeout: a quick jog and dynamic stretches in the parking lot, then ground drills and leg swings in the hotel lobby. Lauren and Ella, who don’t race until tomorrow — there aren’t any trials for the 3200m (just a final on Saturday) — head over to the famous cross country course at Woodward Park for a light run.
At breakfast, we eat sad sausages and eggs at the hotel buffet. Nathaniel goes in for a kiss with Josh, which Josh does not seem to be into.
And now we wait. Nathaniel, Jake and Josh space out on the Nintendo Switch. We eat PB&Js for lunch, then play Bananagrams — which Coach Drew is, like, really bad at. (He doesn’t quite seem to understand that the object of the game is to get rid of all your tiles, not collect as many tiles as you possibly can.) Cam and I have matching Birks. Peter works on his laptop in the lobby.
Hi Peter! Hi Savannah!
Friday afternoon
After a quick nap, it’s finally time to head over to the track.
At the track, Steph gets a stomach ache. Megan swaps the regulation-sized spikes into her shoes.
And finally, the first events of the state trials start. The boys 4x100m (Howmiller, Fagin, Kung, Harrison) starts the meet strong, placing 15th overall with a season best of 42.34. They don’t quite get the school record or make the final, which they had been hoping for, but it’s hard to be upset with that result. Megan places 17th overall in the girls triple jump with a 36’0.25”, and Josh places 18th overall in the boys triple with a 41’10.25”. Zach places 24th in the long jump with a 19’11.75”, and misses the starting height for the high jump — probably because he had to run between the two simultaneous events in the heat. Brandon places second in the wheelchair 400m in a personal record of 1:16.26, and fourth in the shot put with a 17’1.5”.
There’s a lot of waiting involved in a track meet as big as the state championships. Cam poses for a “candid” flex. In one of the most heartbreaking moments of my time in high school, I find out that I can’t run the 4x400m because either the SCVAL or CCS enterer didn’t list my name on the start sheet. Also, congrats to Brandon and his dad for being two of the 11 Asians I counted at the meet for all of Friday and Saturday. Shawn places second in his 300m hurdles heat with a time of 37.68, qualifying through to tomorrow’s final.
Friday evening
The sun sets and the 4x400m relays start. Fredo eats his third Chick-fil-A sandwich, and Steph still has a stomach ache so she lies on the grass in the time between the boys and girls relays. Dave & crew chill out on the slope. The girls (Cox, Randall, MacKenzie, Houdek) place 16th overall with a season best of 4:01.95. The boys (Enthoven, Toney, Howmiller, Harrison) place 18th overall with 3:24.02. Impressive performances all-around. The only athlete to qualify out of Friday’s trials to the Saturday final is Shawn — plus Lauren, Ella and Brandon, who all auto-qualify for the finals in events that don’t have trials.
Friday night
By the time we get back from the meet, it’s 11 p.m., so we order Domino’s and eat in the hotel lobby. Coach Andrew smiles (I think?) for the camera. Some do a quick “relay” around the hotel, but I don’t have any photos of that. Ella, Lauren, Brandon and Shawn can’t totally partake in the fun because they have to rest for tomorrow. We had wanted to go in the pool, but it’s closed. Nathaniel sits on Josh’s lap. Budding romance? Time for bed!
Saturday morning
Rise and shine, you happy rays of sunshine. We eat breakfast then play Set in the lobby. Coach Gerri is pretty bad, but at least Drew is decent at this game — which in some ways makes up for his lack of Bananagraming proficiency. We decide the pool water looks a little too toxic for a dip.
Saturday afternoon
We head over to Woodward Park, the site of traumatic memories for many a sprinter forced into cross country on our team. Cam, Jenna, Jake, Savannah and Braden head back home so we have a smaller crew. We have ourselves a little picnic. Josh, Nathaniel, Brandon, Fredo and I all have a competition to see who can throw a frisbee the farthest. Nathaniel is really bad. Like, worse than Brandon — the guy who can’t use his lower torso and both his legs. Eventually we switch to disc golf, because there just so happens to be a disc golf course at park.
Thank you Nathaniel.
We leave Woodward and make a quick stop at TJ’s, then have about a half hour at the hotel to shower and rest up before we head back to the track to watch the finals.
The first events of the state finals start. We gape in awe as runners — particularly the Southern Section sprinters — run times that we could only dream of. Nathaniel and Josh seem a little more interested in the Mario Kart racing on the Nintendo than the track racing in the stadium. Brandon finishes second in the wheelchair 100m with a personal record of 20.66.
Saturday evening
In the wheelchair 200m, Brandon finishes second with yet another personal record of 38.66. He now holds school records in all four events he competed in this weekend. Shawn runs a stunning 37.42 in the 300m hurdles, earning a third-place medal and breaking his own school record he set just a week earlier. What might be even more impressive, though, is that he hasn’t once taken his shirt off in a public setting this weekend.
Finally, Lauren and Ella get to race the 3200m, the second-to-last event of the day. Ella places 18th with a time of 10:59.11, and Lauren earns herself a fourth-place medal with a time of 10:24.25.
We stick around to watch the stacked 4x400m finals. Ms. Noeth (our school’s athletic director) chats with Coach Carty. Ella’s little sister makes some new friends on the slope by the track.
Saturday night
Okay, well, you’d never guess this, but our hotel just so happens to be hosting the Fresno Drag Festival, and we get back in time to snap a photo with the newly crowned drag emperor and empress of Fresno. What a night.
Sunday morning
It’s time to go home. Nathaniel is upset with me for rushing him out of his room to leave the hotel by a decent time. He says his hair isn’t going to look good now. That’s tough.
Sunday afternoon
We stop back in Los Banos for a quick lunch at Chipotle and coffee at Dutch Bros. Steph, Megan, Drew, Emily, Nathaniel, Josh and I play 20 Questions, Guess Who and Taboo in the car. We find 20 Questions to be really quite frustrating when it comes time for Josh and Nathaniel (a combined team) to think of the thing. Even with their combined brainpower, they have a hard time answering our yes-or-no questions and pretty frequently change their answers. (The thing was a “phone number,” in case you’re curious.)
And we’re finally back. Josh and Nathaniel play frisbee in the parking lot. Megan, Steph and I unload the van and bring things back to the shed. What a weekend!
