Congratulations to our Leland Varsity boys and Varsity girls Cross Country teams as both teams were able to finish in the Top 10 in Division 3 at the CCS Cross Country Championships this past Saturday at the Crystal Springs 2.95 miles course in Belmont.

Our Varsity Boys team that competed this past Saturday at CCS Finals was one of the youngest teams that competed in their CCS Division 3 race as our team was made up of 2 Freshmen, 3 Sophomores and 2 Seniors. Yet our boys team was able to run their best team race of the season as they were able to improve from their 10th place ranking going into their Division 3 race and on Saturday they were able to finish in 8th place out of the 13 teams that competed in Division 3.

Our Varsity Boys team was led by Sophomore, Aditya Garg as he finished first for Leland with his 35thth place with a time of 17:05. 2nd for our team was Senior, Nathan Lee as he finished in 41st place with a time of 17:12. Our 3rd runner was Freshman, Brandon Nagatani who ran a great race as he ran a personal best time by 34 seconds as he dropped his season best time of best 17:56 down to 17:22 to finish in 44th place. Brandon’s time of 17:22 was also the top Freshman time out of all the Freshmen runners in his race. Fourth for our team was Sophomore, Patrick Guzman and he also ran great race as he too broke his personal best time of 18:06 by 27 seconds by running a new personal best time of 17:39. Senior, Varun Rao placed 5th for our team as he finished in 57th with a time of 17:41  Our 6th runner was Freshman, Jasper Gruhl and he also ran a personal best time by 5 seconds as he ran a time of 18:05 to finish in 64th place in the race and our 7th runner was Sophomore, Tyler Orth and he finished in 88th with a time of 19:12.

Our Leland Varsity Girls team was also one of the youngest teams competing in the Division 3 competition at CCS Finals as our Leland girls Varsity team that competed on Saturday was made up of  4 sophomores 1 Junior and 2 Seniors and they too were able to finish in the top 10 in Division 3 by taking 10th place as a team out of the 14 teams that competed on Saturday.

Our Varsity Girls top finisher was Sophomore, Nao Sawaguchi as she finished in 21st place with a new personal best time of 20:26 and that was an improvement of 21 seconds over her previous personal best time of 20:47. Our 2nd finisher was Maile Shinmoto as she finished in 27th place with a time of 20:56. Her time was an improvement by 13 seconds from this season’s best time 21:09. Senior, Alyssa Nagatani was our 3th finisher as she finished in 41st place with a time of 21:47 and she was able to improve 1 minute and 42 seconds from this season’s best time of 23:29. Fourth for our team was Sophomore, Sayuri Lockeshwar as she finished in 84th place with a time of 23:51. Her time improved her season’s best time of 24:05 by14 seconds. Our 5th scoring runner was Junior, Saachi Basavaraju and she finished in 94th place with a time of 25:40. Finishing 6th for our team was Sophomore, Rhea Bambawale as she finished in 97th place with a time of 26:30 and our 7th runner was Sophomore, Allison Gao and she finished in 101 place with a time of  27.12 which is a personal best by 9 over this season’s prior best time of 27:21.