This past Saturday was the 8th annual RustBuster Invitation hosted by us, the Monta Vista Matadors! It was truly a “great day to race” as 17 new meet records were set on the track and in the field – that’s an awesome way to start a track season! The weather held off for most of the day, however there were a couple moments of showers that made some races difficult for competitors. If you made it through one of those events, hats off to you!
Monta Vista faired pretty well team-wise facing the other 13 schools represented. The varsity boys tied with Milpitas for 3rd place overall; the varsity girls placed 7th; frosh-soph boys placed 5th; and our team of only 11 frosh-soph girls placed 11th, beating out Los Gatos and Menlo-Atherton. The combined team’s performance was led by Anika Bhandarkar who won the girls varsity 3200m race with a 22 second PR and also had a top 10 finish in the 1600, also by Alice Ross who won the discus throw by over 9 feet (!!!), and the varsity boys in the 4x400m relay made up of Manas Kottakota, Agasthya Kothuri, Ethan Lu, and Denny Dong who won the race with a time that bested any 4×400’s ran by Monta Vista last season. Kottakota ran a superb first leg to put the team in position to carry it home – congrats guys! Here are all of the top 6 finishes which earned medals:
Varsity
- Ethan Lu – 6th VB 110mH
- Ethan Lu – 3rd VB 300mH
- Tanay Parikh – 4th VB 1600m (huge 16 second PR!)
- Tanay Parikh – 4th VB 3200m (12 second PR and broke 10 minutes!)
- Denny Dong – 2nd VB 800m
- Denny Dong – 2nd VB 400m
- Agasthya Kothuri – 5th VB Triple Jump
- Ryan Shen – 3rd VB High Jump (tied his PR of 5’8″!)
- Manas Kottakota, Agasthya Kothuri, Ethan Lu, and Denny Dong – 1st VB 4x400m relay
- Anika Bhandarkar – 1st VG 3200m (giant 22 second PR!!)
- Alice Ross – 5th VG Shot Put
- Alice Ross – 1stVG Discus Throw
- Lelani Laruelle – 5th VG Long Jump
- Lelani Laruelle – 2nd VG High Jump (tied her PR of 5’2″)
- Valerie Ayzenberg, Annelise Gorts, Juliana Banes, and Hemani Kamarshi – 4th VG 4x800m relay
- Katie Lee, Raji Kenyan, Anika Manjesh, and Lelani Laruelle – 5th VG 4x100m relay
- Valerie Ayzenberg, Katie Lee, Madi Polidoro, and Lelani Laruelle – 3rd VG 4x400m relay
Frosh-Soph / JV
- Alex Frefel – 3rd FSB 300mH
- Graham Ischo – 2nd FSB Shot Put (over 41 feet!)
- Graham Ischo – 2nd FSB Discus Throw
- Edward Fan – 4th FSB Discus Throw
- Jake Tong, Jayden Tang, Ivan Shilakhov, and Alex Frefel – 4th FSB 4x100m relay
- Haris Shaikh, Edison Chang, Jayden Pang, and Jayden Tang – 5th FSB Spring Medley relay
- Ethan Yang, Kento Murase, Ivan Shilakhov, Alex Frefel – 5th FSB 4x400m relay
- Even Greene – 5th FSG Shot Put
- Fiona Rusak – 3rd FSG Discus Throw
- Alex Sharma – 6th FSG Discus Throw
- Avery Whiting, Lauren Moore, Felicity Ho, Zoe Laruelle – 6th FSG 4x100m relay
You can find full results at: https://lynbrooksports.prepcaltrack.com/ATHLETICS/TRACK/2024/rb_res.htm (please note that at the time of writing, results are still be updated with changes)
It was a lot of fun to watch this meet and see all of the great performances – I hope you all had fun with it! We had a large number of kids who experienced their first time competing in a track meet and I think overall that group rose to the occasion. I saw people digging down deep to keep pushing. If you feel like you could’ve given more – that’s okay! Now you know that it’s a decision you make: am I going to let the discomfort stop me or am I going to decide to bear down and push harder through it? This is just the beginning and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what this team will do on the same track in April when we host the league championship. We’re back in action for our first league dual meet at Milpitas on Wednesday, March 6th. Let’s keep the train on the tracks!
Meet photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/malcolmslaney/albums/72177720315200388/page1