Baylands on October 18 was the site of the last SCVAL meet of the 2023 season, and Monta Vista blasted through with PRs galore to prep for the championship meets to come!
The varsity boys started the meet off, and Tanay Parikh’s 10th place led the squad to a 9th-place team finish. The five scoring runners were Ryan Liu, sophomore Rishi Salvi, freshman Kento Murase trying varsity for the first time, and sophomore Soham Beesetti together with Tanay. This group returns next year, so this young squad has much growth potential. The varsity girls raced to a 6th place finish, with Anika Bhandarkar and Miranda Hsu coming in bang-bang, 14th and 15th overall. Miranda was the first freshman across the line. Three seniors completed the scoring, with Valerie Ayzenberg and Margaux Francoeur coming in back to back and Madi Polidoro a minute behind.
The JV races saw Rita Bondar go out hard, then hang tough, while Manasi Prasad, Katie Li, and Mira Ram got close to give MVXC a lead group with less than a minute of separation. Siran Gao completed the scoring as the girls took 8th. The JV boys did not have a complete team, but that didn’t slow Nick Pantino: he had the biggest PR of the day. The frosh-soph boys took 13th, with Simha Satoor, Aiden Cushman-Kihnley, and Qi Huang within 14 seconds of each other at the finish.
Improvement is our goal. Our spirit guide Angela Duckworth would tell us that persistence in pursuing difficult goals is a hallmark of high performers. At Baylands, MVXC saw 19 athletes score personal records–more than half of the MVXC runners out on the course. Good work, everyone!
Personal Records Set At Baylands
| Athlete | Mark | Improvement |
| Mira Ram | 25:44 | 1:25 |
| Nicholas Pantino | 22:14 | 59 |
| Anika Bhandarkar | 19:54 | 53 |
| Booker Volrath | 21:25 | 47 |
| Qi Huang | 20:48 | 45 |
| Rishi Salvi | 18:44 | 39 |
| Bradley Dulay | 19:21 | 37 |
| Sridhar Shivashankar | 22:37 | 33 |
| Aidan Cushman-Kihnley | 20:55 | 30 |
| Tanay Parikh | 16:33 | 24 |
| Simha Satoor | 20:34 | 17 |
| Valerie Ayzenberg | 22:10 | 16 |
| Katherine Lee | 23:35 | 14 |
| Ryan Liu | 18:33 | 9 |
| Soham Beesetti | 19:09 | 7 |
| Juliana Banes | 29:27 | 6 |
| Abhi Kotari | 28:28 | 4 |
| Cameron Polidoro | 21:52 | 3 |
| Darren Lin | 19:27 | 3 |
Complete results have been posted. There are also photos from the race provided by Mr. Slaney.
Next up is Mariner, the final tune-up before the FUHSD championships next week.
Well done, team!
