Varsity Girls, both JV Teams Win Against ‘Toga!
On Thursday last week, we hosted Saratoga for our second league dual meet of the season after a week’s rest. It was a beautiful day to compete as 3 of our 4 teams came out on top: Varsity Girls, JV Girls, and JV Boys. Our Varsity Boys lost by a slim margin, largely due to vacancies in events which were due to various reasons including sickness and injury.
Girls Performance
Once again, the ladies in the field took care of business last week. Against Saratoga, the JV girls took every single field point available against Saratoga, led by Lauren Moore with a pair of wins in both horizontal jumps! On the track, Mira Ram took the win in the 400m.
The Varsity girls also took every available point in the field against Saratoga, with a different winner in each event: Alice Ross in the discus throw, Lelani Laruelle in the high jump, Dylan Hwang in the long jump, Allie Rummelhoff in the shot put, and Clara Fan in the triple jump. Awesome job ladies! On the track, Bhandarkar had 3 wins – she won the 1600m-3200m double, but also took the 400m! And I want to take a moment to point out how she won the 400m; I was calling for all girls varsity 400m runners and nobody was showing up, for MV or Saratoga. Captain Anika Bhandarkar and Juliana Banes both saw the opportunity to score free points for the team and jumped in and ran the race – and Banes was injured! This is the best example of what your coaches have been talking about, it’s the “T” and the “A” in bringing the H.E.A.T. We have to be Team-oriented and Aware of every opportunity to help the team win – “great job” isn’t good enough for these two girls, this was an outstanding showing in character and passion and everyone on the team should think about what that means and how you can do the same! *steps off the soapbox* Raji Kenyan also won the 100m hurdles and Valerie Ayzenberg took the 800m against Saratoga.
Boys Performance
The JV boys had a well-balanced performance to defeat Saratoga, led by Jayden Tang who won the long jump, 100m, and 200m, and Kingston Jourdan who won both throwing events. Other winners were Dayo Davies in the high jump, Ethan Yang in the triple jump, Ivan Shilakhov in the 400m, Alex Frefel in the 300m hurdles, and the 4x400m relay made up of TBD, Edison Chang, Shilakhov, and Frefel.
The Varsity boys lost to Saratoga, but we all know that on paper we are the better team. Coach Curtis already covered what we have to do in the future to not let this happen again, but I’ll sum it up by saying look to what Bhandarkar and Banes did for their team in the 400m. Efforts were led by Tanay Parikh, who won both the 1600m and 800m. Other event winners were Graham Ischo in the long jump, captain Darren Lin in the triple jump, Manas Kottakota in the 400m, and Ethan Zhu in only his 3rd ever 110m hurdle race!
T-Shirts Were Earned at St. Francis!
On Saturday, we sent 24 athletes to the St. Francis Invitational, a great track meet with some of the best competition we’ll see all year! Our standouts of the meet were L. Laruelle, Rummelhoff, and Bhandarkar all earning at least one top 3 finish (which awards them a t-shirt!).
Girls Performance
Our Frosh/Soph ladies had themselves a day! L. Laruelle won both the long and high jump and placed 2nd in the triple while Rummelhoff won the shot put, placed 5th in triple, and 7th in the discus throw. Moore rounded out our 3 top 10 finishers in the triple with her 10th place finish overall!
The Varsity girls were led by Bhandarkar who took a 2nd place finish in the 1 mile (1609 meters) with an exceptionally smart and strategic race! Fan had a 4th place finish in the triple jump, narrowly missing out on a t-shirt – half an inch from 3rd place!
Boys Performance
The Frosh/Soph boys were led by Ryan Shen who won the high jump and took 2nd in the long jump and Ischo who took 2nd in the shot put, 5th in the long jump, and 9th in the discus throw!
The Varsity boys featured Parikh, who was our only athlete in an invitational heat of his event, the 1 mile (again, 1609 meters). This meet saves the best of the best in several events as featured, “invitational” heats and it’s truly an accomplishment even qualifying for that level. Parikh ran a very ambitious first 809 meters, pacing right behind the very fast leader from Palo Alto. He fell back a bit in the last 800, but finished incredibly strong to capture 4th place.
Overall, our whole team competed with heart this past week and I’m proud of the start we are having to our season. Scroll below to see all of the PRs from last week. Let’s take this momentum and amplify it!
This week, we’re facing Wilcox at home for our 3rd league dual of the season, then we follow that up with the Firebird Invite on Saturday at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale.
83 PRs Against ‘Toga!!
Girls PRs (25)
- Katie Lee, Zoe Laruelle, Clara Fan, Lelani Laruelle – 4x100m relay (season best)
- Katie Lee – 100m
- Felicity Ho – 100m
- Elaine Chen – 100m
- Mira Ram – 400m
- Margaux Francoeur – 800m
- Miranda Hsu – 800m
- Elina Jalili – 800m
- Miranda Hsu – 1600m
- Annelise Gorts – 3200m
- Raji Kenyan – 100m H
- Raji Kenyan – 300m H
- Allie Rummelhoff – Shot Put
- Anika Manjesh – Shot Put
- Aditi Chamarthy – Shot Put
- Jasmine Zhao – Shot Put
- Allie Rummelhoff – Discus Throw
- Sofia Schilling – Discus Throw
- Maya Pullara – Discus Throw
- Lelani Laruelle – High Jump
- Dylan Hwang – High Jump
- Allie Rummelhoff – High Jump
- Rafaela Maglaque – High Jump
- Lelani Laruelle – Triple Jump
- Allie Rummelhoff – Triple Jump
Boys PRs (58)
- Jeffrey Song – 100m
- Rishi Bhagatwala – 100m
- Shashi Bhagwat – 100m
- Graham Ischo – 100m
- Trevor Chan – 100m
- Andrew Cheng – 100m
- Haris Shaikh – 100m
- Hyonjin Kim – 100m
- Aneesh Boddu – 100m
- Anshul Sinha – 100m
- Kevin Liu – 100m
- Cameron Miller – 100m
- Eric Fernandes – 100m
- Nicholas Chen – 100m
- Gaurav Purushothaman – 100m
- Vishal Iyer – 100m
- Aaron Tang – 100m
- Krithin Addanki – 100m
- Jayden Tang – 200m
- Jeffry Song – 200m
- Rishi Bhagatwala – 200m
- Andrew Cheng – 200m
- Brandon Xu – 200m
- Cameron Miller – 200m
- Nicholas Chen – 200m
- Eric Fernandes – 200m
- Aaron Tang – 200m
- Ivan Shilakhov – 400m
- Jake Tong – 400m
- Bradley Dulay – 800m
- Harly Liu – 800m
- Ryan Liu – 1600m
- Ethan Yang – 1600m
- Kento Murase – 1600m
- Aidan Cushman-Kihnley – 1600m
- Cameron Polidoro – 1600m
- Qi Huang – 1600m
- Sridhar Shivashankar – 1600m
- Stanley Wang – 1600m
- Bradley Dulay – 1600m
- Jake Tong – 65m H
- Ethan Zhu – 110m H
- Vishal Iyer – 110m H
- Kingston Jourdan – Shot Put
- Krish Kotecha – Shot Put
- Graham Ischo – Shot Put
- Eddie Fan – Shot Put
- Nate Diaz – Shot Put
- Rishabh Prabhu – Shot Put
- Adam Abdelrahman – Discus Throw
- Alexander Zeng – Discus Throw
- Kingston Jourdan – Discus Throw
- Krish Kotecha – Discus Throw
- Jayden Tang – Long Jump
- Ethan Yang – Long Jump
- Dayo Davies – Long Jump
- Dayo Davie – Triple Jump
- Louis Yang – Triple Jump
8 PRs at St. Francis!!
Girls PRs (8)
- Lelani Laruelle – Triple Jump
- Lelani Laruelle – Long Jump
- Lelani Laruelle – High Jump (tied PR of 5’4″)
- Lauren Moore – Long Jump (results will not show it because they had an error in reporting the mark, but she jumped 14’3″ instead of the reported 13’4″)
- Allie Rummelhoff – Shot Put
- Allie Rummelhoff – Discus Throw
- Allie Rummelhoff – Triple Jump
- Anika Bhandarkar – 1 Mile