Let’s quickly recap three big days of track and field action!
Triangle Meet: Cupertino and Saratoga @ Monta Vista March 21st
Monta Vista hosted Tino and Toga with a lot on the line, including the MVTF varsity girls’ unblemished league record.
After recognition of our soon-to-graduate seniors, the team took to the track. There were hard fought battles. The varsity girls’ team found themselves in a tight team matchup with Cupertino. Tino’s strength in the the throws was countered by MV dominance in the sprints, and close fought matchups in the distances and jumps became turning points with Triya Roy in the 1600 and Jessica Ji in the high jump delivering some key event wins. The 3200 put the girls over the top with Sylvana Northrop, senior Claire Chang and Rachel Jiang delivered a sweep in the penultimate event.
The frosh-soph boys also delivered wins and stay near the top of the league standings. The frosh-soph throwing boys continued to impress as Eric Zheng, Sammy Banerjee and Henry Hodgkins had the top three tosses in both discus and shot. Strong jumps by Brandon Xu, a sub-11 minute PR in the 3200 by Justin Yu, big points in the hurdles from Sotirios Kougiouris and some 800 dominance from Sahil Goal and Pranav Reddy put the frosh-soph boys’ team in the win column once again.
A highlight of the day was the 4x400m varsity boys’ relay, the final event of the day. Finishing in a roaring cheer tunnel in a back and forth battle with Saratoga, Andrew Richardson anchored a team with Pranav Pata, Arnav Raut, and Peter Heydinger. Andrew ran a tough back and forth leg, and pulled out a gutty victory less than one second in front of a game Saratoga team. Veteran observers all agreed this was a fantastic race and a great example of why we love high school track!
PRs on the day included Arnav Raut, Tim Chen, Jet Chow, Tabitha Mendez, Andie Liu, Hinato Sato, Hinako Takamatsu, Arushi Agastwar, Natsumi Arita, Inara Rahman (100m), Rohun Agrawal, Tyler Liu, Elisabeth Hsu (800m), Christian Dulay, Sylvana Northrop (3200), Sotirios, Reema Apte (Hurdles), Jen Prall in the shot and Tabitha and Eric in the discus, Manu Kondapaneni, JJ, Natsumi, Sammy Dunn (LJ), and Cheryl Bai in the triple (sorry if I missed anyone!).
The varsity girls emerge with an unblemished five team wins with no losses in league competition with a tough Santa Clara squad standing between the girls and a perfect league record. The frosh-soph boys added two wins to move to 4-1 on the season. Complete league standings are here.
Complete results for the meet are on-line.
De Anza Invitational
In search of some good Saturday competition, Monta Vista headed a mile down McClellan for the De Anza Invitational.
The team seemed to like the near-home meet setting. JJ continued her mission to own the 5′ height with another five foot clearance and a second place. Reema Apte scored a PR in the long jump, soaring 15 feet for the first time, and Arnav Raut joined her as he soared 40′ in the triple for his own PR! Sammy Banerjee continued the throwers’ roll with a discus PR. Sean Chen and Sotirios notched hurdle PRs, and Alex Richardson had a 400m PR agonizingly close to 46 (he recorded a 46.09 mark). Sylvana Northrop took advantage of a strong field to run a 5:26.26 PR in the 1600.
Complete De Anza Invitational results are on-line.
Azusa Meet Of Champions Distance Classic
One of the highlights of the distance runners’ season is a drive down I-5 to the Azusa Pacific University distance festival. A unique feature of this meet is a seeding system that puts many runners with similar PRs in the same heat; you might have 20 runners all with PRs of 5:01 to 5:05 all gunning to break five minutes. These fields give everyone exciting races all day long, and lots of opportunities for competitors to help each other to new personal records.
The Monta Vista runners love this meet, and came to Los Angeles fired up. Out of 19 races, the team brought home 14 PRs and three more season bests! When you have that many PRs it feels like every race is a highlight. Vivian Lau took advantage of the beautiful sunrise and the cool morning weather and a fast field to knock more than 20 seconds off her 32oo PR and go under 12 for her first time. All our 800 entrants had good days, Andrew Richardson and Vivian Cheng both having PRs and Anjali Thontakudi going out hard and bringing back a season best. The 1600s saw Ellie Hsu, Pranav Reddy, Matthew Sun and Upasana Dilip put up really big PRs of more than 10 seconds each! And at night, we had two spectacular races in Rated 3200m heats. Rohun Agrawal was caught in a pile up with 600 meters to go, went down hard, got up again and still finished fifth and broke 10 minutes for the first time! There is nothing like breaking 10 and then being mobbed by your teammates. Triya Roy got into very fast race, using competitors like a frog uses lily pads to continue jumping up; she fought hard and was rewarded with an 11:31 personal record (currently 12th in CCS).
PRs and big high fives for Andrew Richardson, Nitin Subramanian, Sahil Goel, Pranav Reddy, Matthew Sun, Tyler Liu, Andrew Cole, Rohun Agrawal, Vivian Cheng, Jannah Sheriff, Elisabeth Hsu, Upasana Dilip, Triya Roy, Vivian Lau.
Complete results are posted here.
