The Santa Clara Valley Athletic League championships are one of the most competitive meets around, and always a great night of track! The 2017 edition was no exception.
Leading off in the very first heat of the meet were Monta Vista’s 4x100m girls’ relay team, who set the tone for the evening with a one-second victory in their heat! The girls’ time was a season best mark and stood up for fourth overall, good for Monta Vista’s first CCS berth of the evening (the top six places from SCVAL move on to the Central Coast Sectional Meet).
Kelly Bishop followed with a SCVAL championship in the 1600m. Her description of the race was pithy and got a laugh out of both the meet timer and her coach; ‘There was a lot of bumping and elbowing, so I tried to get out front, and then I heard a big ‘thump’ behind me so I just kept going.” Later in the meet, Kelly added a second place in the 800m. Bennett Zhang later added his own name to the list of MV distance runners competing in CCS, running a 9:47.05 to claim a spot in the 3200m race next Saturday in Gilroy.
Among the MV sprinters, Evelyn How ran a standout race under pressure to claim the last CCS spot in the girls’ 100m with a 12.66 mark. Evelyn is the first athlete from Monta Vista to compete at CCS in the 100m distance in years…I’m not sure how many years it has been, this is going to take some research. We are super proud of our Evelyn standing tall!
Meanwhile in the field events, Jessica Ji was becoming another double-qualifier to the CCS meet, high jumping 4’10” and triple jumping a personal record 34’8.25″ to move on in both events.
The SCVAL meet often pushes athletes to new personal records, and despite a bitterly cold evening, Monta Vista athletes did make many personal records fall. Monta Vista PRs set on Friday included:
Adam Jancis (senior) 200m 24.19 PR
Scott Gregory (senior) 800m 2:01.68 PR
Andy Fang (sophomore) 1600m 4:36.68 PR
Jeffrey Xu (junior) 3200m 9:56.62 PR
Paru Meyyappan (senior; will compete for Carnegie-Mellon University next year) 3200m 11:39.73 PR
Cynthia Gong (sophomore) Long Jump 15’1.5″ PR
Jessica Ji (sophomore) Triple Jump 34’8.25″ PR
And finally, in the final events of the night, as the cold grew worse and the bugs flew in the stadium lights, the 4x400m relays finally got rolling. For twelve long months, Monta Vista 400m runners had this race circled on their calendars, after 2016 ended bitterly with a girls’ seventh place only 0.62 seconds from a trip to sectionals and a boys’ team DQ that still seems impossible. Twelve months of workouts, twelve months of coaches waking screaming in the night ‘why oh why?’, twelve months of gritted teeth and preparation. Now, as the barriers came down and fans that had been confined to the stands came to the center of the track ready to cheer, the 4x4s were ready to come to the line.
The Monta Vista girls came out like a team possessed. With Monta Vista athletes spread around the inside of the track yelling themselves hoarse, Kelly and Evelyn ran blistering legs, and came around the half way mark in a remarkable 2:01 split. Freshman Claire Ettinger and Sophomore Reema Apte took the stick and made that start stand up for a season best 4:09.30, good for fourth in the race and a spot in Sectionals. Currently, that mark is 12th in the 150 team Central Coast Section this year!
The boys, inspired perhaps by the girls, ran fierce legs. Sophomore Derek Zheng ate up much of the stagger and passed off to senior Andy Ma in good position. Senior Scott Gregory, who has been riding a major upswing the last month in both the 400m and 800m, took the baton and pushed the pace further. When anchor runner Eliot Lubomirsky took the stick, nursing a bit of frustration perhaps from a seventh place finish in the 400m, he was in position to bring the race home in a sparkling 3:25.69; good for second place in SCVAL and a place in the CCS meet. The boys’ time is the best mark put up by any Monta Vista 4×4 team in at least seven years, and is less than three seconds off the all-time school record. The boys are ranked 5th in CCS heading into the championships!
Amazing night.
The complete results are online on Hank Lawson’s Lynbrook site. There are also great photos taken by Mr. Ma that you can take a look at–and download!
Hope to see many of you make the trek to Gilroy next Saturday for the first part of the CCS meet!
CCS Qualifiers from Monta Vista
Anella Palacpac 4×100
Evelyn How 4×100, 100m, 4x400m
Claire Ettinger 4×100, 4×400
Alisha Gao 4×100
Kelly Bishop 1600m, 800m, 4×400
Reema Apte 4×400
Jessica Ji High Jump, Triple Jump
Bennett Zhang 3200m
Derek Zheng 4×400
Andy Ma 4×400
Scott Gregory 4×400
Eliot Lubomirsky 4×400
