52897978374_30019e99b2_o

Dong Leads Boys at De Anza, Laruelle Shines at Arcadia

This past weekend, we sent a crew of athletes down the street to De Anza College for the 9th Annual Cupertino High/De Anza College Invitational. This is typically a great meet with quality competition, this year being no different with De Anza receiving the most entries they ever have! It was a varsity meet, with the only frosh/soph events being relays. Monta Vista ended up in 5th place out of 49 total school in the combined score – that’s really something! On the boys varsity side, we were announced as the winners, but the scores have since been updated to showing us behind Coach Flatow’s alma mater, Willow Glen, by 1 point. Let’s see if that changes anymore in the next day or so, but I’m still very proud of what our boys pulled together and accomplished! We also sent two qualifying athletes to the Arcadia Invitational, The Home of National Records. Clara Fan competed in both the girls triple jump and high jump while Lelani Laruelle competed in the girls high jump. More on their performances below.

Team, I think we are setting ourselves up nicely to perform at our peak in two weeks at Leagues! I know a few of you are banged up and recovering from shin splints, muscle strains and tears, sickness, etc. so the focus for you is recovery. We’ve all put in a ton of work leading up to now – it’s been money in the bank. When it’s time to withdraw and pay the bills (e.g. step on the line, on the runway, or in the ring at Leagues) you should realize that you have plenty to spend! We’re going to make a few more deposits this week and balance the checkbook next week over spring break, cleaning up our technical aspects of our events as much as possible. As long as you all have the mindset to win, we can do it! (I hope you following the bank/money analogy – I barely did…)

Boys Performances

The star of the day at De Anza was Denny Dong who won the boys 400m in a time of 49.30 seconds, setting a new Monta Vista school record and a new meet record! Congratulations, Denny – this is quite a feat! Dong also placed 2nd with the 4x400m relay team, 3rd in the 200m, and 5th in the 800m. Other top 3 finishers were Tanay Parikh placing 3rd in the 3200m, and the rest of the silver medal 4x400m relay team of Manas Kottakota, Agasthya Kothuri (who cracked 20 feet in long jump!), and freshman Alex Frefel.

Girls Performances

The girls had 5 top 10 finishes at De Anza, led by Anika Bhandarkar who was 4th in the 3200m and 10th in the 1600m. Allie Rummelhoff snagged 4th place in the shot put, Miranda Hsu placed 8th in the 3200m, and Katie Lee placed 10th in the 100m. There were multiple PR-setting performances that didn’t quite make top 10, but are more than worth noting – please see those below! Great job, ladies!

Fan and Laruelle took on some of the best high school athletes in the country at Arcadia in the jumps. Fan finished 12th overall in the girls invitational triple jump with 35’1″ and was tied for 7th in the girls open high jump with 5’1″. Laruelle competed in the girls invitational high jump finishing 5th with a stellar jump of 5’6″ – that ties the Monta Vista school record! Both of these ladies are capable of taking that high jump school record as their own and it’s just great to see them both working so hard together to get there. Awesome job, girls!

Quad Meet Up Next

Monta Vista will host Fremont, Cupertino, and MacDonald this Thursday for a quad meet. How that works is that the meet will be scored several ways all at the same time: MacDonald vs Monta Vista, Fremont vs Monta Vista, Cupertino vs Monta Vista, MacDonald vs Fremont, and Fremont vs Cupertino. We’ll also be celebrating our seniors during this meet and afterwards at the team dinner, so please be there! The meet starts at 3:30pm.

20 PRs Total!

Girls PRs (8)

  • Katie Lee – 200m
  • Madi Polidoro – 800m
  • Anika Bhandarkar – 1600m
  • Anika Bhandarkar – 3200m
  • Miranda Hsu – 3200m
  • Allie Rummelhoff – Long Jump
  • Lauren Moore – Long Jump
  • Lelani Laruelle – High Jump (5’6″, TIED THE SCHOOL RECORD!!)

Boys PRs (12)

  • Ben Chen – 200m
  • Andrew Cheng – 200m
  • Denny Dong – 400m (49.30, SCHOOL RECORD!!)
  • Ryan Liu – 1600m
  • Tanay Parikh – 3200m
  • Andrew Liu – 3200m
  • Ethan Zhu – 110m H
  • Manas Kottakota, Agasthya Kothuri, Alex Frefel, Denny Dong – 4x400m relay (season best)
  • Eddie Fan – Shot Put
  • Adam Abdelrahman – Discus Throw
  • Nate Diaz – Discus Throw
  • Agasthya Kothuri – Long Jump (20 ft – huge barrier!)
  • Agasthya Kothuri – Triple Jump