Greyducks Disappointed But Hopeful

Stuyvesant’s girls' varsity cross country team, the Greyducks, ended their season at the city championships in Van Cortlandt Park. In addition to the usual girls’ cross country powerhouses, Brooklyn Technical High School, Susan Wagner High School, and Cardozo High School, newcomers from Millenium High School, and Gaynor McCown Expeditionary Learning School lit up the track at the city championships. The Greyducks finished in sixth place, a slight step down from last year.

To start, though the team didn’t make the State Championships, falling a bit short of the fourth place cutoff, two of the team’s most talented runners had exceptional individual performances. Senior and co-captain Clara Mohri and sophomore Julianne Yotov both qualified for State’s. Mohri sought to leave a mark on PSAL girls’ cross country circuit, with this being her final year representing Stuyvesant at the city championships. She wore her badge proudly and did just enough to carry the Stuyvesant legacy to States. As for Yotov, the sophomore is showing great potential for what is to come in her future years representing Stuyvesant. An outstanding performance with her captain in the five-kilometer distance run will see her out to States this year as well. In fact, the underclassman slightly ousted the impressive time put up by Mohri.

Yotov isn’t the only underclassman that is making great progress and hoping to carry the torch for the girls cross country team when the seniors graduate. As one of the only freshmen on the team, Alicia Yu showed tremendous strides of improvement throughout the season. In the five-kilometer race, Yu had a time of 23 minutes and 11 seconds, roughly a minute and a half faster than her time at the beginning of the season. Stuyvesant has a group of runners whose raw talent is matched only by a stubbornness and lack of contempt that characterizes the school itself. The lack of complacency has pushed the team to great heights in the past, and if the younger, talented underclassmen continue this habit, there is no doubt that the Stuyvesant team will reach heights that it hasn’t seen before.

“The team without a doubt came ready to run. In the end, it just wasn’t quite enough to push us over the hump, but the team put in everything they could, and it would be hard to ask for more,” said junior Ester Suleymanov when asked to reflect on the team’s season. The Greyducks built up to the city championships for the entire season and put on display some of their best performances of the year. But they were ousted by powerhouses who were determined to show their dominance in the sport and up and coming schools who had something to prove. There is no shame in losing to great competition. The team’s result this year will serve as motivation for next year, as they look to reclaim their stake amongst the great PSAL teams.