11.11.23 – The Menlo cross country teams raced in the CCS Championships, and came away with a team state bid and an individual CCS champion, also heading to state. At the Crystal Springs course in Belmont, sophomore Ariya Kaushek won the Div. V girls’ race and the Knights boys’ team took silver.
Kaushek ran the 2.95-mile course in 18:33.4 to win gold in a field of 69. She finished 12th overall among all divisions.
“Ariya looked better than ever and she raced really well,” Menlo Coach Jorge Chen said.
The boys’ team was led by junior Landon Pretre, who ran in 16:08.3, coming off an injury. Freshman Henry Hauser finished eighth in 16:41.8 and junior Will Hauser was ninth in 16:46.8.
Sophomore Amay Srinivasan​ was 14th in 17:37.6 and freshmen Jonah Block ​(15th in 17:38.1) and Tristan Chen ​(19:01.1) round out​ the Menlo School team​ among 105 runners.​The boys took second only to Crystal, which they had beaten last week to take the WBAL title.
​”Landon made a last-minute decision to race not 100 percent so he could help the team and ended up surprising everyone with an impressive runner-up finish. The boys qualified for state again with a second chance to put the pieces together in two weeks to give Crystal a good challenge again.”
The Knights girls finished fourth with Lavanya Badjate, Marissa Louie, Audrey Tsao, Bella Ewars & Zoe Chuang completing the team.