IASIS Exchange 2017: Flying to Bangkok to Run For the Rams

This article is a collaboration between writers Chirag Asnani and Nina Sepahi.

While the tennis and volleyball players went to Beijing for tri-cities, the AISG cross country team travelled to Bangkok for three days and four nights for the annual IASIS Exchange with as many as eleven other schools and 70+ other runners. The team hopped on a flight on Thursday morning, buzzing with excitement for the first trip of the year, returning on Sunday night exhausted from a weekend of meeting new people and getting some valuable racing experience in.

On the Thursday evening of arrival, the cross country team checked in to the Best Western Wanda hotel, showered, and filled themselves up with a delicious buffet meal. Freshman Leyla Sepahi suggested this was the greatest night of the weekend claiming, “Of all the past sports trips, this is the best meal I’ve had!” After that, the team took a trip to the mall and bonded over arcade games before going to bed for the night. The next day, after taking a five hour bus ride to the resort, the runners had a pre-race 6k run and ate dinner with all twelve schools. On the day of the race, the AISG cross country team woke up at 5:30 am and took a bus to the course, with the girls’ race starting at 8 am and the boys’ shortly after. Even though they did not place in the top 10 individually and/or top 3 schools as a team, the runners knew competition at IASIS was a great deal tougher than at APAC, and valued the experience they received in such a competitive race.

The most enjoyable part of the weekend came shortly after lunch on the day of the race. Runners from all schools were put into groups, with 1-2 runners from each school in a group. This was an opportunity to meet new people from the region and bond with people they are normally competing against. The groups were supposed to work together in challenges, and were given points based on how well they performed and/or worked together. Jim, a junior from the team, was a part of the winning group, and was just as excited about the memento-like prizes he won as we was about meeting such kind new people from different schools.

Traveling to Bangkok for IASIS was the first sports trip out of China for many of the runners, especially the underclassmen, who genuinely enjoyed the event and its contents just as much as they did racing competitively. Though they might not have been as happy about the way the team did as a whole, runners will have a lot to take as positives from this race, as many hit a personal record and everyone gained a lot of experience working hard in the hot, humid, Thai weather. In addition, meeting new students from the region and experiencing positively in a social manner with people they compete against made this event even more enjoyable. The team will run at APAC in Guangzhou this Saturday, as AISG cross country prepares to host APAC for the second time, achieving first place at home in 2013.