SCOTTS VALLEY — One (huff), two (huff), three (huff), four (huff), five …
Rishi Chandiramani and Mitchell Ross counted quickly and breathlessly as they pumped out push-ups on a corner of the football field at Scotts Valley High. The sweat on their necks from racing had barely dried, yet the two Falcons cross country runners were already engaged in another battle of wills to determine who could pump out 20 push-ups the fastest.
“… 19, 20!” Chandiramani yelled, jumping to his feet and strutting a few steps as he gleefully celebrated his most recent victory. The senior knew to revel while he could, because the next challenge no doubt was just around the corner.
The seven boys on Scotts Valley’s cross country team just can’t help throwing down the gauntlet when they’re around one another. Whether it be on the trails, in the weight room or across the ping-pong table, they see a competition in everything. That constant one-upmanship could tear a team apart. Instead, it is what the Falcons point to as the reason this is likely the fastest team in program history.
The Falcons won the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League title earlier this month and on Sunday proved themselves as one of the fastest teams in the Central Coast Section in taking second to King City in the Division IV championship at Toro Park in Salinas. For this group, though, second isn’t good enough.
They are frothing at the chance to avenge their CCS loss and overtake King City on Saturday at the CIF State Cross Country Championships at Woodward Park in Fresno. Their goal is to beat Scotts Valley’s high-water mark, a third-place showing in D-IV in 2014.
Well, that and beat each other.
Coach Gretchen Schmitt said she can only do so much to rein in her runners’ competitive drive. All she could do was shrug at the sight of the push-up competition. And that race the boys finished just prior? It wasn’t even supposed to happen. Schmitt had planned an easy practice, and a race broke out.
“It’s like a horse,” she said. “You just hold them, hold them, hold them. And on Saturday, we’ll let them go.”
Junior Mitchell Ross, the loser of the push-up contest, has cemented himself as the team’s No. 1 runner. Behind him, it’s anyone’s guess. Schmitt said the order hasn’t been the same in any two races this season. At CCS, sophomore Lukas Berg Mills claimed the top spot for the Falcons. It was not only his first time holding that place in his high school career but also a vast improvement over 70th place, which is where he finished a year earlier. At the SCCAL finals, freshman Jeremy Kain closely chased Ross, the runner-up to three-time champion Chris Anderson of San Lorenzo Valley. Berg Mills took fifth to give Scotts Valley three runners in the top five. Senior Darren Mudge and junior Logan Ross — Mitchell’s twin brother — rounded out the Falcons’ scoring five, taking 10th and 13th, respectively.
The river of maroon and gold didn’t end there, though. Just six seconds separated Logan Ross from the Falcons’ Nos. 6-7 runners, Chandiramani and sophomore Patrick Goodrich, as the Falcons fit their entire team into the top 15 slots. At CCS, the team was equally tightly meshed. Scotts Valley achieved the smallest spread among its five scoring runners — 28.7 seconds — of any team in any division competing that day. In addition, though its enrollment is among the smallest in the section, Scotts Valley turned in the seventh-fastest overall team time at CCS (1 hour, 24 minutes, 14 seconds), and that was without Chandiramani. The Falcons’ rally-cry leader was traveling with his family during the section meet, which had to be rescheduled several times due to poor air quality from Northern California fires.
“You never know who’s going to be in what spot. And that means we’re pushing everything, all the workouts, all the runs,” Mudge said. “It definitely contributes to a lot of our speed.”
Nearly all the runners are returners from a team that last year finished third in the SCCAL and ninth of 14 teams in CCS D-IV. The only addition is Kain who, despite being a freshman, brought high expectations after setting the world record for 12-year-old boys in the 800 meters in July 2017.
Yet competition, which is now the glue of the team, almost became the dividing nail as each of the runners came back stronger and more determined to achieve individual success this season. It took a concerted effort by the seniors to renew and reinforce the friendships on the team to thwart any chance of their competitive nature getting the best of them.
“With these guys, we got really close last year. We were a really tight group,” Chandiramani said. “And then this year, we got fast, and now everyone wants to be beating everyone on the team.
“Every race, yeah, we have competition outside the team, but really we’re all just racing against each other and it really pulls everyone.”
So when a Falcons runner gets beaten by a teammate, it elicits a mixture of pride and frustration. It can also evoke relief. Most state-bound teams are just four or five runners deep, which, with five counting toward a team’s score, leaves no room to fail. With seven boys capable of finishing within a minute of each other, however, a Scotts Valley racer doesn’t have to stress about taking risks or having an off day, which is bound to happen at some point in the season.
He can, however, expect to hear all about his foils from his teammates.
“It’s not always a race,” Chandiramani said, recalling the unofficial team motto, “but most of the time it is.”
If You Go
CIF STATE CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIPS
When: Saturday, 8:30 a.m.
Where: Woodward Park, Fresno
Online: cifstate.org
County entrants:
D-I Girls: Layla Ruiz, Watsonville
D-III Boys: Eli Ainsworth, Soquel; Josiah Sweet, Aptos
D-IV Boys: Scotts Valley (Lukas Berg Mills, Mitchell Ross, Logan Ross, Jeremy Kain, Patrick Goodrich, Darren Mudge, James Thompson, Rishi Chandiramani)
D-IV Girls: Lila Roake, Santa Cruz; Jessica Kain, Scotts Valley; Gabby Hughes, Santa Cruz; SLV (Azalea Groleau, Kayla Penny, Maya McCabe, Kaleigh Pennington, Camryn Crouch, Summer Hipwell)
D-V Boys: E.J. Kelly, St. Francis; Connor Spangrud, Pacific Collegiate
D-V Girls: Nellie Rubio-Pintor, Ceiba
