Palo Alto High School's sports news magazine

Viking Magazine

Palo Alto High School's sports news magazine

Viking Magazine

Palo Alto High School's sports news magazine

Viking Magazine

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Girls’ cross-country finishes 12th at Central Park meet

Rachelle Holmgren [12] leads the lady Vikes early on in the race. she placed second for Paly.
Rachelle Holmgren [’12] leads the lady Vikes early on in the race. she placed second for Paly.

The Palo Alto High School girls’ varsity cross-country team finished 12th out of the 14 schools that competed at the Central Park Cluster meet on a mild afternoon Tuesday in Santa Clara.

Paly finished the meet with a total of 275 points, well behind the 72 points of first place Lynbrook and rival Gunn’s 94 points.

The Titans’ Sarah Robinson (‘14) won the race with a time of 13:40.6, over two minutes faster than Shaheen Essabhoy (‘13), the first Paly finisher. Essabhoy placed 34th overall finishing the 2.3 mile long course  with a time of 16:00.5 and an average mile pace of 6:57.

Teammates Rachelle Holmgren (‘12), Lydia Guo (‘12), and Anna Dairaghi (‘13) clocked in with times of 16:11.5, 16:13.2 and 16:57.1 respectively, good for 44th, 46th and 75th place overall.

Tuesday’s meet was especially challenging for the Lady Vikes because all of the team’s top runners did not compete.

“I think the team did really well today, [especially] because we didn’t have any of our varsity
runners. Because they [ran] at the Stanford Invitational this past Saturday and weren’t allowed to run today,” co-captain Torie Nielsen (‘12) explained.

The runners, however, still came to the meet to cheer on their teammates, motivating them to work hard despite the absence of the team’s leaders.

“Everyone who wasn’t running was out there cheering us on. Without them, we tried our best,” Holmgren said.

Paly’s next race is the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League (SCVAL) preview at Crystal Springs next Thursday.

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About the Contributors
Kevin Dukovic, Editor-in-Chief
Kevin is a senior and joined The Viking staff at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year.  He has an older brother (Brandon) who was also on staff and a younger sister (Anna) who is now a sophomore at Paly.  Kevin is a huge fan of the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Yankees, seeing as how he grew up on the east coast, and enjoys playing pick-up sports games with his friends in his free time.
Austin Poore, Features Editor
Austin is a senior at Paly. He joined The Viking at the start of the 2011-2012 school year, and loves covering Paly sports. He plays Paly baseball in the spring and also played basketball, but has decided to hang up the sneakers. He loves the San Francisco Giants (Fear the Beard!), Green Bay Packers and Stanford Cardinal (Fear the Tree!). He also enjoys playing pick-up sports with friends.
Nikolai Solgaard, Staff writer
Nikolai is a senior at Palo Alto High School. He runs varsity for both the cross country and track teams. He joined the Viking in 2011 because of his love for sports. In his free time Nikolai likes to run and hang out with friends.

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