For the third season in a row, the Irish Cross Country team have qualified both the Boys team and the Girls team for the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Championship Meet.
"Getting both teams to State is our most beloved goal," said Head Coach Andy Chan, now in his 28th season. This marks the eighth time in program history this accomplishment has been achieved. The Irish have previously qualified both teams to State in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2024.
This year, however, posed a different sort of challenge for SHC. "We graduated a lot of top runners and great leaders from our 2023 and 2024 teams," said Chan, "When the summer started, the goal was to improve enough to simply get to CCS and just try to be competitive. At that time I saw us as the underdogs this season."
Starting in the summer and all through the season, two themes emerged. First, team leaders like Veronica Panina '26, Dagny Suro '27, Sean Kummer '26, and Ian Wong '26 made sure there was a lot of team building outside of just running. "Community is our secret weapon," said Panina. Second, Chan was much more intentional about knowing everyone's training, their paces, and race plans. "For a couple years, we had an experienced group so I just stayed out of their way. They knew what to do for training and at meets," explained Chan, "But this season I was very intentional about knowing everyone's training. Strava helps a lot with that."
The 2025 SHC cross country season theme was Lock It In. And the team was definitely locked in all season long. The JV Girls were Co-WCAL Champions and the team placed 1st at invitationals seven times. "We were getting PR's and winning medals and awards at meets," said Chan, "After one meet, I remember telling them, 'I guess you didn't want to leave the mountain top.' And that has become our mantra. This 2025 team locked in and decided that we were going to keep having the same success we had in 2023 and 2024."
Kummer has led the Irish all season and CCS was no different. Despite being sick most of the week, Kummer led the Irish with an 11th place finish. The battle to get 3rd place as a team to secure a spot to State Meet was for the Irish to pack their next runners together and place ahead of their counterparts from North Monterey County (NMC). And that is exactly what the Irish did. Sophomores Oran Brick '28 and Giovanni Ponce '28, both running in their first CCS meet, placed 15th and 16th. Then seniors Wong and Jack Biggar '26 (both of whom have run at State Meet once before) made sure they would finish their SHC careers with a return to State, placing 19th and 24th respectively. SHC was easily ahead of NMC to secure the Boys team's 11th trip to State in program history. The other team members going to State are seniors Rynan Pardilla '26 and David Kulas '26.
On the girls side, Burlingame stood between SHC and a 12th trip to State in program history. St. Ignatius was the favorite to win so SHC needed to beat Burlingame. "We knew it would be close. That it would probably come down to the last 1000 meters and our girls would have to fight for it," said Chan, "I was OK with that because I've seen this team handle pressure situations and grit it out before. I was confident they would do it again."
Burlingame was looking strong early on with their runners taking 1st and 2nd. But then came a pack of SHC runners. Annalisa Covucci '28 (7th), Suro (9th), Panina (10th), Maya Pfalzer '27 (12th) and Harper Rice-Evans '27 (15th) all broke 20 minutes and finished within 8 places and 25 seconds of each other. That more than made up the points needed to pass Burlingame. Mavis Slagle '28 and Jamie Kopstein '28 round out the Irish squad that's headed to Fresno.
The final meet of the 2025 season will bring the Irish to Fresno's Woordward Park for the CIF State Championship Meet on Saturday, November 29.
Congratulations, Cross Country! Go Irish!!!
