Monta Vista’s first trip down Highway 85 to Leland High School and the Quicksilver Invitational was a day to remember, as MVTF athletes brought home plenty of records and hardware!
The 2019 track and field season’s compressed calendar has lead to some new situations on the schedule. Monta Vista was not the only team competing at the Quicksilver Invitational for the first time–this was the largest Quicksilver Classic ever, with 65 schools attending! As the sunrise lit up the Monta Vista canopy near the finish line, athletes were warming up for an 8am start for a track meet that would end under the lights.
Quicksilver is set up as a double meet; all the frosh-soph events are contested first, and when the younger athletes are done, the varsity athletes begin the same sequence of events. For Monta Vista, first on the track were our frosh-soph girl 1600m runners. These girls gave us an inkling of what our day would be like, as Vivian Lau, Rachel Jiang and Anoushka Lakshmi all scored personal records. Rachel went under six minutes for the first time, and Vivian ran an aggressive race and finished with an outstanding 5:32.99 mark to take second place out of a large field of 59 runners. The frosh-soph boys followed up with PRs from both Andrews (Richardson-4:42.78 and Cole-5:10.80) and a fifth place medal for A.R., and MVTF was settled in for a fine day of track and field.
Frosh-soph highlights included a 2-3 finish in the boys’ 400m for Arnav Raut and Vishal Koppuru (out of 62 runners–we will stop repeating the size of the fields now that readers should have the idea that this was a BIG meet!). Henry Hodgkins and Eric Zheng added two more medals in the shot, and Eric added a first place and meet championship in the discus. In addition to Eric’s discus championship, Ellie Hsu ran a smart, tactical race and found herself in a tough fight at the end; Ellie out kicked her competition for a 0.18 second victory in the 3200m with a 12:27.20. Over in the sand pits, Arnav gave Monta Vista a third individual championship in the triple jump with a 43’3.5″ mark. The boys closed out the frosh-soph section of the meet with a victory and a new Quicksilver meet record in the 4x400m relay, as Sahil Goel joined Andrew R, Arnav and Vishal to give Monta Vista seven gold medals before our first varsity athlete hit the track!
At roughly 3pm, the varsity meet started. The varsity athletes kept the momentum rolling from the start. Sylvana Northrop and Triya Roy notched PRs of 5:18.48 and 5:19.64, as well as medals in the 1600m, to signal that varsity was going to be matching MVTF’s morning achievements! Nitin Subramanian (4:35.30), Rohun Agrawal (4:36.47) and Eric Wang (5:09.60) followed with three more big 1600m PRs–and both Nitin and Rohun went solidly under Coach Flatow’s own high school personal best mile mark (and Coach did not get his PR until senior year, so Nitin and Rohun have an opportunity to completely bury coach over the rest of this season and next couple of seasons, too!). Brooke Young and Evelyn How went 1-2 earn Monta Vista girls the first two podium spots in the 100m sprint. Bianca Young added a medal in the 400m, as did Martin Xiao in the shot and Reema Apte in the triple jump. Just as in the frosh-soph session, Monta Vista closed out the meet with a 4x400m meet championship; his time it was the girls’ turn, as Brooke, Bianca, Evelyn and Vivian Cheng combined for a 4:09.30 to bring home a championship in the 4×400 with a five second victory!
At the end of the meet, Monta Vista had earned a total of 27 medals–including championships in two of the 4×400 relays (FSB and VG), the frosh-soph girls’ 3200, the frosh-soph boys’ discus, the frosh-soph boys’ triple jump, and the varsity girls 100m sprint! In team scoring, the varsity girls finished in second place and the frosh-soph boys in first place–out of 65 teams at the meet! This is a ‘wow’ performance by Monta Vista!
In addition to the medals, and more importantly in most ways, Monta Vista athletes had 32 personal records (PRs). I think we have them all: Andie Liu (100m), Yana Padte (200m), Arnav, Vishal, Vivian Cheng, Ananya Rajagopal (400m), Rohun, Eric Wang, Vivian Lau (800m), Nitin, Rohun, Andrew R, Andrew C, Sylvana, Triya, Vivian Lau, Rachel, Anoushka (1600m), Jannah Sheriff, Ellie (3200m), Sotirios Kougouris, Claire Yang (300m hurdles), Henry, Eric Z, Vibha Iyengar (shot), Eric Z, Tabitha Mendez (discus), Khang Pham, Brandon Xu (long jump), and Arnav (triple jump).
Complete results for the meet are posted on line. Mr Ma was able to come for a short time and has added some of his usual wonderful photos.
Quicksilver was a truly outstanding meet for the Monta Vista athletes! We had good weather and good competition on a fast track. The meet was a great chance to express all the work we put into training this season, and our athletes took advantage of this opportunity. Part of our success was the way that the team was incredibly supportive of each other. Among others, Vivian Lau and Ellie Hsu stayed for hours after their races, taking splits for their teammates and cheering. Nitin went home after his race, showered, and came back for the last few events, and Kyle Tsujimoto came to cheer and help even though he was not running at all. This spirit is part of what gives our team such success. Having teammates there to support each other helps make hard work and deep effort possible, and helps lead to our own personal achievements. We were proud of all of you on Saturday!
Great job, everyone!
