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Monta Vista had an exceptional night last Friday, advancing 16 athletes to the CCS meet!

SCVALs is an interesting night; there are a lot of tough competitors in many events, leading to many PR opportunities.  At the same time, the main goal for many top athletes is simply to qualify on to the next meet–CCS.  The top 6 athletes in every competition move forward, and in addition there is an opportunity to qualify at-large by hitting an open mark (very tough to do).  This situation makes the meet tactics very interesting, very much like the USA Olympic Trials meet–athletes want to hit a mark, and this is a good opportunity to run fast, but also moving on to the next meet, CCS or Olympics, is a huge accomplishment.

Monta Vista has 16 athletes moving forward to CCS–compared to 6 in 2013!  The list of athletes moving forward is:

Bridget Gottlieb (sr), Jenny Xu (jr), Maddie Yip (so), and Kelly Bishop (fr)–all in the 3200m!  Monta Vista has more than 10% of the competitors in the entire section that are still alive–amazing!

Rohan Choudhury (jr)–3200m.

Emma Seyer (sr) in the discus and shot, and Kiersten Chuc in the discus.

James Migdal (so), Sanjna Bharadwaj (jr), and Neehar Kondapeneni (sr), all in the high jump (nice job athletes AND coaches!).

Donald Swen (sr) in the 300h.

And in the 4×100 and 4×400 relays, Chatty Adiga (jr), Roch Ambati (jr), Albert Han (jr), John Hsiao (sr), Anand Rao (sr), Sai Rangamathan (so) and Donald will continue to shepherd the baton around the oval!

There are some great photos of the meet taken by Andy Ma’s father, and complete results are here.

One thing I really love about this meet–at the end, we have an open mile that anyone can run, either hard or for fun.  Coaches, competitors, supporters, it doesn’t matter.  Over the years, the Monta Vista track family has been a bigger and bigger part of the event–and usually at the end of the meet, there are more Monta Vista people still on the field laughing and talking about the day and enjoying themselves than any other school.  It says a lot about how the core group of Monta Vista athletes truly love this team and this sport–and it always gives me a lot of joy to see all of you out there!

After SCVAL