Monta Vista rolled into the SCVAL championship meet with some significant momentum from an excellent team performance at the El Camino League Finals, and our athletes did not disappoint!
The first athletes on the track can set the tone for the day, and all season long the girls running the 4x100m relay have got out of the blocks in style. Friday May 11th was no different, as Evelyn How, Brooke Young, Nanda Nayak and Bianca Young combined for a blistering 48.31 mark to win the event and become the first Monta Vista athletes to secure a spot in the 2018 Central Coast Section Championships–but this group would not be the last!
Next up, an all frosh-soph group of boys (Henry Lassa, Pranav Pata, Arnav Raut and Sarang Deshpande) put up a 46.22, the fastest time by a MV 4x100m team of any class this season. The SCVAL experience gained by this group of underclassmen will be an asset as they continue to develop over the next two years. Freshman Zoe Wang, who ran for the varsity team all year, went under 17 seconds for her first time in the 100m hurdles, giving her a nice number to build upon in the next three years. In the 400m, Derek Zheng notched a season best, senior Devin Perriera ended her MVTF career with a 66.84 PR, and Bianca scampered home with a 58 second lap good for second place and Monta Vista’s first individual berth in the sectional championships that start next week. Evelyn and Brooke finished 2-4 in the 100m sprint to quickly record MV’s second and third spots, while Nanda recorded a 13.02. Nanda, who has played soccer for Monta Vista all four years, has joined track for the first time in her senior year, and has dropped her 100m time from 14.79 in her first meet at Wilcox. Imagine if every soccer player at Monta Vista could run more than a second faster!–how would our soccer team be transformed?
The last few meters of the 800. Pro Tip: When you see hip #91 challenging hip #1, something unusual and special is going on in that race!
While all this sprinting was going on, Anjali Thontakudi was patiently (or not-so-patiently) waiting to see if she was going to race. As the first alternate, Anjali needed one of the girls in the race to scratch so that Anjali could run. Half an hour before the race, we were notified of the scratch, and Anjali was racing. Placed in the slower, first heat, Anjali ran a smart race, sitting on the leader for the first 600 meters and starting her kick on the final turn. In a tight, hard finish, Anjali won her heat by a mere 0.3 seconds and setting a new three second PR with a 2:26.46 mark. A few minutes later, Anjali found out that this was not all–her mark was bested by only five of of the runners in the ‘fast’ heat, and so Anjali was heading to the sectional meet as a league representative. Hardly anyone makes it to sectionals from the slower heat. Anjali’s run from alternate to SCVAL representative is remarkable–in just over 30 minutes, Anjali went from not running at all and her season being over, to making the Section meet and having at least one more week of racing and training! This is a story that your coach is going to be telling for years, whenever he needs a story to support a ‘never give up’ theme! (I remember back in ’18, there we were at the SCVAL meet, waiting to see if anyone would scratch. Her name was Anjali Thontakudi. I remember it like it was yesterday! We had started to give up hope, when lo and behold…)
The back of the meet seemed to fly by. Sisters Brooke and Bianca recorded two more invitations to the section meet with their 1-4 finish in the 200m. Sarah Feng had a season best 11:46 in the 3200m, taking 6th place in a stacked field with Triya, Sylvana and Sanjana closely behind. Senior Jeffrey Xu will also be heading to CCS after a smart and tough race to a 6th place finish.
Some good marks were also recorded by our field eventers, lead by another big triple jump PR Reema Apte, a 33’6.25″ effort which was another 8″ PR–Reema has extended her TJ PR by an astounding 17″ in this month! Sometimes you keep working away and it seems like there is no improvement for all your efforts. However…maybe there is a big improvement right around the corner! It’s important to be gritty, and persistent, and be patient with the roadblocks and distractions along the way. Reema is all that! Reema’s triple jumping is one excellent example of the possible rewards from persistence and grit displayed this season by many Monta Vista athletes. Derek Zheng also had a season best triple jump.
Finally, in the 4x400s, the Monta Vista girls took a strong second place to advance to sectionals, while the boys finished a heartbreaking 7th, less than a second from the 6th place slot.
The Monta Vista boys and girls combined for 55 points, good for 7th place combined/overall in the 14 team league.
With six pizzas delivered to the track, the Monta Vista athletes and support crew of volunteers crushed the pizza and reflected on a really good day. Win or lose, it’s a good life.
Complete SCVAL meet results have been posted. Monta Vista meet photos from Mr. Ma are posted, and meet photos of all teams from Mr. Ma, Malcolm Slaney and Mark Foster.
Thank you as always to Hank Lawson for timing the meet, and Santa Clara Honor Coach L’Heureux for being an excellent meet director.
