Monta Vista Track drove up 280 north this past Saturday, April 14 to Junipero Serra High School to take part in the annual Top 7 Invitational. Triya Roy got the day started with a new PR of 5:24.96 in the 1600, followed soon after by a group of PRs for the guys in the same race. Derek Lee and Rohun Agrawal both dipped under the magic 5:00 mark with new PRs of 4:54.97 and 4:58.49, and Siddhant Patel and Piyush Masurkar rounded out the event with PRs of their own.
In the hurdles, freshman Ben Tang jumped into the 110m distance for the first time and followed later in the meet with a nice 46.25 for the 300m distance–a nice pair of PRs to take home on a Saturday for break week! Meanwhile in the long jump, Khang Pham was clearing 16’9″–an impressive 7″ personal record.
After that, it was the sprinters’ turn to light up the track and Bianca Young got the 400 crew started with a sparkling effort, winning from wire-to-wire with a 1 second PR of 59.29, currently the 11th fastest time in CCS. Bianca came in as the top seed and, showing poise and experience beyond her years, took the race out hard and closed strong to turn back the competition. Vivian Cheng has been on a roll as of late, consistently bettering her best 400 time, and that continued at Serra with an outstanding 65.55 effort that shed over a second from her prior best. Ananya Rajagopal added a PR of her own as she ran the one lap race in 68.41 seconds.
Monta Vista had not one but two girls in the Top Heat of the 100m and anticipation was high as several heavy hitters from across the Bay Area lined up for the start. When the dust settled, Monta Vista’s Evelyn How and Brooke Young shined as they claimed 3rd and 4th place in 12.64 and 12.80 respectively. Nanda Nayak and Morris Chiang continued their strong senior seasons as both nearly equaled their 100 best, clocking 13.42 and 11.65. Brooke joined Bianca along for the 200 later in the day as once again Monta Vista found itself with two athletes–and sisters!–in the Top Heat. Bianca won the Young Sister battle this time as she claimed 4th to Brooke’s 7th. Both girls ran very impressive times from difficult lanes (1 and 7) into a steady headwind, with many more battles to come in the middle ground! Sneha Maiti also recorded a 200m PR under these tough wind conditions.
Some of the most exciting races of the day were the men’s 800, as meet directors packed 25 athletes in each heat. Justin Lin made it through his race having some very difficult conditions – including getting spiked on his thigh and bleeding – and nearly PR’ed, showing tremendous focus and grit. The Richardson brothers, Andrew and Alex, were able to navigate their packed race and ran astonishing PRs of 6 seconds each! Andrew clocked a 2:11.42 and Alex added a 2:17.97 – great job boys! Our last individual competitors on the track were Sanjana Borle, Sylvana Northrop and Rachel Jiang in the girls 3200. Sanjana chopped some time off her old PR and was able to grab the bronze medal with a strong kick for 3rd in a new best time of 11:45.79!
To close out the meet, Monta Vista’s sprinters returned to the track for the 4×400 relay. After a very aggressive seed time entered by their coach, the girls found themselves in the Top Heat, ready to roll. Reema Apte took the team out and set up Brooke Young for the second leg. Brooke flew around the first turn, got to the cut-in quickly, and proceeded to pick off competitors one by one while splitting 59.8 seconds. Up next was Evelyn How who ran a strong leg especially considering it was her first 400 since Rustbuster, and handed off to Bianca Young to close it out. Bianca ran a sparkling 58.9 second split to nearly chase down the lead team and secured 2nd for Monta Vista (with only a very good Carondolet team from the North Coast Section) a time of 4:09.46 nearly equaling last year’s best and good for #9 in CCS.
Overall, Monta Vista athletes recorded an even dozen PRs, reminding us that the Serra meet can be a PR factory even when the weather is not perfect. There is a good amount of competition at Serra and the meet is scheduled at a good time in the season for athletes to express all the training they have done into races. The varsity girls team scored 40 points; this put them in an impressive 4th place finish, 23 points behind North Coast power Carondelet and only 6 points from the Presentation in second.
The teams are excited to prep for Top 8 at Lost Gatos next weekend, where we’ll once again have a chance to compete against the Conference’s best athletes!
