Muirlands track and field athletes pull off championship ‘re-sweep’

After Muirlands Middle School’s extracurricular track and field team took home a trifecta of San Diego Unified School District championships last year, head coach Kaylee Tan made it her goal to run it back for a second year.

On Oct. 11, the La Jolla team did just that.

Muirlands secured a “re-sweep” with a dominant performance from the boys athletes and, with help from a strategic last-minute adjustment, a gritty win from the girls and the overall team championship.

Tan praised the team’s competitiveness and tight-knit chemistry in capturing a “well-deserved” second consecutive sweep.

“On the boys side, we were so strong we dominated it all,” she said. “[For] the girls, that was really exciting because I know some of the other schools were missing some of their top athletes. So just being able to take advantage of that and score more points than them was really thrilling.”

To pull off the sweep, Muirlands had to compete against 15 top Western Division teams in SDUSD, part of a larger pool of more than 30 teams. Students participated in girls and boys categories in sixth, seventh and eighth grades for four solo races and a long-jump competition. There also were two relays in which any grade could participate.

Tan created a spreadsheet ahead of time of her students’ personal records and the details of their competitors.

“I’m a little bit of a nerd,” Tan said. “I will go look at these websites for track and field and I’ll look at everyone’s personal records and I’ll look at other teams. I kind of went into it with a strategy, and I knew how many points we would score.”

A late recalculation showed a need to make an adjustment the day of the competition, she said. With each team member allowed to participate in a maximum of four events, Tan told Gemma Gorman — a runner Tan said is very talented across all events — that she would be competing in different events than previously planned.

“As I calculated everything, I was like ‘Oh wait, we’re going to be down two or three points if everyone scores the way their personal records say they will,’” Tan said. “So last minute, the day of, I said ‘Hey, you’re not running the 400-meter, I want you in both relays.”

Gemma, a seventh-grader, agreed, and as it turned out, the girls and team championships went down to the final relay race.

“I had all of my athletes and all the parents line up and cheer on each girl athlete as they ran around the lap,” Tan said. “I knew if we won that race, we would win all three titles. But if we didn’t, we would get second place.”

Tan’s recalculation paid off, as the girls team won by just a few seconds. Gemma ran the final lap.

“It was definitely kind of a boost in confidence because in the back of my mind I’m like ‘Yeah, I did that for my team,’ but it wasn’t only me,” Gemma said. “My teammates really kept up with the other team and they just gave me a boost when I ran.”

“It was pretty crazy because that happened last year, too,” she added. “It’s really great for our entire team to do that.”

The girls team thrived despite what Tan described as a series of injuries and illnesses and commitments to other sports.

The boys, meanwhile, put together a dominant season and a sure-handed championship win.

“The last two years just felt really good to win the competition after all our events and all our practices,” said Leo Hagan, an eighth-grader. “It felt really nice to get results out of that.”

He cited two keys to the team’s success.

“I think part of it is that we have great coaches that obviously know what they’re doing,” Leo said. “They definitely know how to teach us well.”

Also, he said, “all the kids on the team work together and support each other.”

Tan, a student track and field athlete at UC Irvine, said she attends classes throughout the week but makes the commute for Muirlands’ Thursday practices and Saturday meets.

The Del Norte High School graduate got connected to the school program through Stephen Garcia, a coach at Del Norte and Muirlands. In fall 2024, he approached Tan about heading the Muirlands team.

The remainder of the coaching staff consists of Kyle Wood, Bianca Calafato and Emily Pesch.

“I’m really passionate about track and field and I really want to help these kids and I want them to improve,” Tan said. “They’re just such a sweet and smart group of kids. It’s easy to drive back down.”