It’s always a great day to race!
Sometimes at that first hot, dusty day in Salinas it’s hard for non-runners to believe that a race day is always a great day…however anyone who saw the excitement—and nervousness—that the MCXC13 runners felt on Saturday, September 7 at the Earlybird Invitational certainly saw that for all of us, racing is the best!
The Earlybird Invitational is one of the big early season meets in Northern California and is an excellent preview of the coming season for Central Coast Section teams. The race format is to start with the freshman and race class by class, finishing with the seniors. This is a great way to get the season rolling.
Monta Vista has a spirited and talented group of freshman boys and girls this season, and we are all so happy with the energy that our new teammates have brought. Our freshmen got the season off to a great start. We had two frosh bring home medals on Saturday, Max Sawyer (with a nice 17:34) in the boys race and Kelly Bishop (under the 20 minute mark with a 19:47) in the girls race. The frosh boys overall scored a 5th place finish (out of 21 teams), with Aayush Jain also getting into the top 30 runners. While the frosh girls did not field a complete team, all three girls (Kelly, Paru Meyyappan and Kaylene Patti) finished in the top 25! This frosh class, boys and girls, is a great addition to our team, and will be a part of our core for their entire careers at MV.
The girls picked up the pace and kept pushing the entire day. Sophs Maddie Yip and Anna Hsiao, who both ran Varsity as frosh, showed they were back with solid performances as the heat continued to increase during the day. The junior girls put together a strong effort, and the scoring five of Jenny Xu, Julia Chang, Chloe Li, Isabel La Plain and Sanjna Bharadwaj won the juniors’ race—this is the third straight year that these girls have been on the podium, and this year they were at the very top! The senior girls team also ended up on the podium, with a strong second place finish. The seniors were lead by a breakout performance by Bridget Gottlieb; Bridget’s 19:03 was the fifth fastest time of the day for all girls, together with Jenny Xu, Monta Vista put two runners in the top 10.
The boys scored an overall placing of 14th out of 49 teams, a strong showing which was 3 places better and almost a minute faster than last year! The top seven boys represented all grades—three seniors (Zach Patti, John Hsiao, and Anand Rao), two juniors (Rohan Choudhury and Emilio Torres-Gonzales), and a soph (Brent Mogensen) and a frosh (Max Sawyer). This group, and the rest of the boys team, has had great practices together over the last couple of weeks and have really been pushing each other hard, and working together like a team. The boys are off to a good start and will continue to build during their quest for a return to the CCS Championship meet.
PRs were hard to come by as the temperature climbed into the 90s, however we did have quite a few PRs—and a few big ones. Anyone who improved deserves a standing ovation for a great effort on a tough day. Runners with an improvement of more than a minute were Akshay Thontakudi, David Wang and Bridget Gottlieb, while we had two athletes recording impressive three minute improvements: Ching Pan and Connor McMillan. Congrats to all of you who made improvements of any amount!
If you had a great race, celebrate! If you had a rough day, what can you learn? No matter what, it’s great the get the first race of the season in the books—a good rust-buster is always valuable! Top to bottom, we are proud of MVXC13. Way to go!
Complete results are available here.
ROHAN CHOUDHURY 11 MONTA VISTA 17:08
BRENT MOGENSEN 10 MONTA VISTA 17:17
MAX SAWYER 9 MONTA VISTA 17:34
ZACHARY PATTI 12 MONTA VISTA 18:02
JOHN HSIAO 12 MONTA VISTA 18:08
EMILIO TORRES-GONZA 11 MONTA VISTA 18:26
ANAND RAO 12 MONTA VISTA 18:41
AKSHAY THONTAKUDI 11 MONTA VISTA 18:46
AAYUSH JAIN 9 MONTA VISTA 19:12
STEVEN LIM 12 MONTA VISTA 19:23
ISMAEEL SHERIFF 12 MONTA VISTA 19:30
DAVID WANG 11 MONTA VISTA 19:33
VAMSEE VEMULAPALLI 10 MONTA VISTA 19:42
KEVIN KRAUSE 12 MONTA VISTA 19:58
NORMAN MU 12 MONTA VISTA 20:19
SALVADOR TORRES-GON 12 MONTA VISTA 20:22
ANDREW MA 9 MONTA VISTA 20:27
JONATHAN FUNG 10 MONTA VISTA 20:28
SCOTT GREGORY 9 MONTA VISTA 20:31
LUCAS TAO 10 MONTA VISTA 20:47
MICHAEL TRINH 12 MONTA VISTA 20:52
ARCHIT DUA 12 MONTA VISTA 21:07
AKSHEY NAMA 9 MONTA VISTA 21:11
CHING PAN 12 MONTA VISTA 21:24
GEORGE YANG 12 MONTA VISTA 21:25
ANUSH VELMURAGAN 12 MONTA VISTA 21:32
WYATT LIAO 12 MONTA VISTA 21:35
LEONARDO FRAMBA 12 MONTA VISTA 21:38
TYLER PENNEBAKER 11 MONTA VISTA 21:50
WAYNE SHU 11 MONTA VISTA 21:54
JOSEPH WILSON 11 MONTA VISTA 22:04
STEVEN CHUNG 9 MONTA VISTA 22:05
PHILIP LAM 11 MONTA VISTA 22:09
JIMMY LI 10 MONTA VISTA 22:15
YUREN STEVE SHANG 11 MONTA VISTA 22:26
YUJI MORI 12 MONTA VISTA 22:27
BRIGHTON BALFREY 9 MONTA VISTA 22:35
HARRISON DING 11 MONTA VISTA 22:39
LEE MRACEK 10 MONTA VISTA 22:51
ERIC TAN 11 MONTA VISTA 23:00
SCOTT (SUNG JI 10 MONTA VISTA 23:09
ETHAN NG 9 MONTA VISTA 23:13
MATTHEW CHEN 10 MONTA VISTA 23:13
WILLIAM LI 10 MONTA VISTA 23:17
KENJI KADOKURA 10 MONTA VISTA 23:36
CONNOR SULLIVAN 10 MONTA VISTA 23:45
TOMMASO FRAMBA 9 MONTA VISTA 24:01
YOUNG GUO 11 MONTA VISTA 24:04
JUSTIN CHANG 11 MONTA VISTA 24:25
PERRY TING 11 MONTA VISTA 24:37
CONNOR MCMILLION 10 MONTA VISTA 25:10
ALEX KAO 12 MONTA VISTA 25:30
JUIYI LI 12 MONTA VISTA 25:51
LAWRENCE HAN 10 MONTA VISTA 26:31
AIDAN GOTTLIEB 9 MONTA VISTA 26:50
ZAREK PERIS 10 MONTA VISTA 27:02
BRIDGET GOTTLIEB 12 MONTA VISTA 19:03
JENNY XU 11 MONTA VISTA 19:17
KELLY BISHOP 9 MONTA VISTA 19:47
MADELEINE YIP 10 MONTA VISTA 20:25
SUNNY SHAN 12 MONTA VISTA 20:45
JULIA CHANG 11 MONTA VISTA 21:00
ANNA HSIAO 10 MONTA VISTA 21:12
PARVATHI MEYYAPPAN 9 MONTA VISTA 21:52
KAYLENE PATTI 9 MONTA VISTA 22:04
CHLOE LI 11 MONTA VISTA 22:50
ISABEL LA PLAIN 11 MONTA VISTA 23:13
ALICE JOHNSON 12 MONTA VISTA 23:34
NAMRATA SUBRAMANIAN 10 MONTA VISTA 23:45
KIRSTEN DO 12 MONTA VISTA 23:53
SANJNA BHARADWAJ 11 MONTA VISTA 24:39
SHARON TUNG 10 MONTA VISTA 25:38
NUPOOR GANDHI 10 MONTA VISTA 25:49
JOANNE LAI 11 MONTA VISTA 25:54
SARAH WEINBERG 11 MONTA VISTA 26:17
NAAMA BEN DAVID 10 MONTA VISTA 27:41
KIERSTEN CHUC 12 MONTA VISTA 28:26
MIRANDA CHEN 11 MONTA VISTA 29:27
HANNAH HO 11 MONTA VISTA 29:29
AJUNEE KOHLI 10 MONTA VISTA 30:30
HARINI SHYAMSUDAR 11 MONTA VISTA 31:27
