The sports season is in full swing, with girls golf rocketing past previous team records thanks to an onslaught of career-best performances. Meanwhile, two cross country runners sped past their competition at the Stanford Invitational, the football squad racked up 400 yards of offense on the gridiron, the girls tennis team blanked Fremont and the girls water polo team grabbed their first win of the year. Let’s get to it!
Golf
The girls golf team kicked off league play brilliantly, shooting a Harker team best of 197 to beat Notre Dame San Jose last week in a game that saw numerous career bests. Junior Ashley Zhong (38), freshman Vanessa Tyagi (41), senior Madelyn Wang (45) and sophomore Alexis Gauba (50) all broke their best-ever marks, while junior Daphne Liang (39) tied hers. The best score of the day went to freshman Katherine Zhu, who earned medalist honors with a par performance of 34. The team record bested the previous record set just last week of 205 strokes and catapulted the team into a tie with rival Sacred Heart Prep the very next day, 228-228.
Cross Country
Senior Corey Gonzales and sophomore Niki Iyer ran blisteringly fast races in the Stanford Invitational Cross Country Race on Saturday. Gonzales’ fiery run was a personal best and placed him 11th out of 260 runners from throughout the state. Iyer, meanwhile, beat out 252 other runners to place fifth in her Division 4 race. Both Gonzales and Iyer will look to defend their times from last year’s league championship in the first WBAL meet of the year this week.
A number of runners also had big days on Saturday at the Westmoor High School course. Both senior Rahul Balakrishnan and sophomore Andrew Rule ran personal bests by nearly one minute over their races last year. Junior Alex Dellar ran a strong 16:30, while freshman Aria Coalson pushed hard for a great finish and a 20:12 time.
Football
The Eagles dropped their game against the Mt. Pleasant Cardinals on Friday night despite racking up 400 yards of offense thanks to great performances by seniors Keanu Forbes and Christian Williams, junior JK Keller, sophomore Will Park, and freshmen Nate Kelly, Anthony Escobar and Dominic Cea. Two freshmen defensive players, James Pauli and Anthony Contreras, also had standout games.
Volleyball
The girls volleyball squad’s record now stands at 3-6 after the team went 1-3 at the Presentation Tournament, where it fell to highly ranked teams from Rocklin, Los Gatos and Valley Christian.
Tennis
The girls suffered their first defeat of the season against Milpitas before bouncing back convincingly with a dominant 7-0 victory over Fremont.
Water Polo
The boys team lost its first game of the season when Wilcox stunned the Eagles with a come-from-behind victory, erasing the memory of a dominant 16-3 trouncing of Santa Clara earlier in the week. Both the varsity and junior varsity teams are now 3-1 in league play. Meanwhile, the girls defeated Wilcox for their very first league win of the season, 16-9, behind goals from seniors Delaney Martin, Anushka Das and Sheridan Tobin, junior Yasemin Narin, sophomores Meghana Karinthi and Sarah de Vegvar, and freshman Emma Brezoczky.