Monta Vista’s track team kept rolling with a plethora of outstanding performances at the El Camino League Championship meet!
We are now in the post-season portion of our season. Every meet is an elimination meet–if athletes don’t place in a certain position, that is the end of the season. Also, with each meet, the level of competition increases; while this competition does bring pressure, more importantly these races also bring opportunity to improve. Every competitor is a gift, placed there to help us find something within ourselves that we did not know we had inside us.
PRs A Plenty
Monta Vista athletes had a chance to express months of training on the track, with many personal records. Among the sprinters, Pranav and Henry both had 100m PRs; their marks of 11.77 and 11.88 are the #2 and #3 times for MVTF in the sprints this season, and Pranav won the Frosh-Soph division. Coach John McKeeman is certainly happy they are both sophomores and is looking forward to seeing them both continue to develop over the next two seasons. Evelyn posted a 12.33–low 12s is now where our Evie lives–and Brooke and Kelli both had PRs in the 100m also. (Some perspective–in 2013, Kelli’s 13.87 would have been the fastest time recorded all year by MV.) In the 200m, Henry recorded a second PR along with Vishal, Brooke again, Bianca, Vivian, Jacki, Kelli once more, and Devin. Brooke and Bianca combined with Evelyn to finish 1-2-3 in the 200, and together with Santa Clara made that event look a lot like a dual meet.
The 400m saw PRs from Arnav, Vishal and Devin, while Bianca recorded a varsity girls’ championship and Vishal and Vivian both had second place finishes. In the 800m, senior Justin Lin recorded a PR 2:04.04 along with PRs from Andrew, Alex, Christian, Lauren and Cynthia (Cynthia continues to break coach’s heart by running middle distances so well, yet continuing to play hard-to-get when coach wants to talk about XC). The distance events saw more PRs from Lauren, two each from Rachel and Claire Lin, Derek and Rohun. We also saw senior Jeffrey Xu earn his second straight league championship in the 3200m.
Hurdles were a key event for the Frosh-Soph boys in their pursuit of a league championship. Sean and Conner had double PRs in the 65m and 300m hurdles, including an FS league championship for Sean in the 65s. Together with Benjamin they went 1-3-4 in the 65s and 2-4-5 in the 300s for a total of 34 team points (more on that later). Senior Richard Dowd had two PRs to go with PRs from Sabrina, Zoe, and Sara.
Field events had their share of glory, with Martin setting a PR while winning the Frosh-Soph discus competition and Ashwyn and Rucha also notching discus PRs. Will, Manu and senior Anita Narkhede all had high jump PRs, Manu had another in the long, and Arnav and Reema both have new PRs in the triple.
Our relay teams had outstanding days, as Monta Vista squads took championships in three of the four 4×400 relays and the girls’ 4x100m team set a new league championship meet record while winning a championship of their own.
Team Results
The league meet and the dual meet results each count 50% when the league championship is determined, and our freshmen and sophomore boys left no doubt. After recording a 6-0 dual meet season, they scored 164 points to take the league championship meet (second place was 96) and take home the league title. Varsity girls took second in the championship meet and third for the season, the JV girls were 5th, and the Varsity boys 6th. Our young boys look like they are in a position to build upon this season, and the other coaches in the league think that the Monta Vista girls are the early favorite next year (particularly if we can add some more strength in throwing and continue to develop in the jumps).
Next Up For Monta Vista
Athletes now advance to the SCVAL championship meet. The top 16 varsity athletes in each event (there are a few quirks in how this is determined, but mostly we compare times from the league championships to determine who will advance) from our league and De Anza advance and compete for a berth in the sectional trials. The SCVAL meet will be held next Friday at Santa Clara High School; field events start at 5pm and running events at 5:30. SCVAL is a very fun and competitive meet to watch, and we hope that many people attend, not only our athletes! (Also if you want to volunteer to join the hurdle crew, you will get free admission…Jason Tsujimoto will be collecting names so see Jason if you would like to help out).
The top six finishers at the SCVAL meet automatically advance to the Central Coast Section championship trials, along with athletes who hit the challenging at-large marks.
All the athletes that have earned entries for the SCVAL championship have been posted.
Looking for More?
Complete results are posted, and we have a lot of great photos from Mr. Ma.
Keep it up, Monta Vista! See you on Friday at Santa Clara HS!
