The MVHS Athlete of the Year award has been awarded for decades to commemorate the most outstanding athletes of the graduating senior class. This year is no different.
Hannah Rutherford is a name that will likely be remembered in the record books for years to come.
A two-sport athlete, she has played tennis since she was in third grade, as both of her parents play recreationally. Rutherford was a part of the MVHS tennis team all four years of high school.
“I’ve met a lot of close friends through [tennis], and the community on the MVHS tennis team has been really awesome,” Rutherford said.
Yet where she shone was on the track.
Coming onto the track team freshman year after being introduced to the sport via the Los Altos School District Jr Olympics program, Rutherford made a splash, drawing attention from people all around the area.
“You just couldn’t help but notice that there’s this phenom freshman at Mountain View,” current track and cross country head coach Jonathan Hubbs said, referring to his first impressions of Rutherford while he was coaching at another school.
Her prowess in the sport was not short-lived, and she proceeded to improve every single year and now holds the MVHS record for the 400m, 200m, and 100m sprints in addition to being ranked 5th in California.
Throughout her career as an MVHS athlete, she says the biggest takeaway is persistence, as an elite-level athlete, it often can be hard to improve.
“Progress isn’t always linear,” she said, “being able to work through that, not getting discouraged when you plateau [is key]”
Similarly, Kiran Haywood is also walking away from his MVHS athletics career with 3 records to show for it.
He said he initially became interested in running because he was looking for a sport to get PE credits from, and his dad recommended cross country. Though he did not make the team his freshman year, this would not be the end of Haywood’s running career. He proceeded to make the team in his sophomore year and started to see improvement.
Coach Hubbs said that though Haywood’s sophomore season started slow, he had a breakthrough race at the Baylands, where he improved drastically.
“I thought, okay, there’s something going on here,” Hubbs said.
Since that race, Haywood has helped lead the MVHS cross country team to becoming CCS Division I champions in 2024, as well as being a part of the 4×1600, 4×800, distance medley relay track teams that have set school records.
Yet, this success did not come easily. Hubbs noted that to improve as much as Haywood did takes an incredible amount of effort and dedication.
“The amount of hard work and dedication that goes into achieving what he did is absolutely incredible,” Hubbs said.
Although the nature of their sport is largely individual, both athletes stress the importance of their community when it comes to success.
“The accomplishments that we make with the team [are] always the best ones,” Haywood said.
Going forward, Rutherford will be running for the Stanford University track and field team, while Haywood will attend California Polytechnic State University and plans on continuing to run cross country at least at the club level, both leaving Mountain View with lasting legacies.
“I’m very proud of them,” Hubbs said, “I think they both earned this.”
