What a great four days of track and field action! Let’s hit the highlights…
Wednesday at Wilcox:
In Monta Vista’s last dual meet of the season against Wilcox, our varsity teams both fell once more, so our boys end the season winless and the varsity girls are 1-5. However both our frosh-soph boys and JV girls prevailed over Wilcox and both ended the season with unblemished 6-0 records!
While our varsity girls had areas of strength, we did fall 84-42. In distance events, we showed our strength by sweeping the distance events, with juniors Paravathi Meyyappan and Kelly Bishop winning the 1600m and 800m, and freshman Sarah Feng following up with a win in the 3200m. Senior Giselle Kaneda and Freshman Jessica Ji came through with a 1-2 finish in the high hurdles, and sophomore Mahima Shanware came back from an some time off to heal to bring home a victory in the high jump. Nonetheless the Charger’s depth prevailed as our girls went down to a well-fought defeat.
The varsity boys faced a similar battle, falling by an almost identical 82-44 score. Junior Andy Ma and Senior Vamsee Vemulapalli went 1-2 in the 800 while senior Anindit Gopalakrishnan and Rahul Uppaluri also had 1-2 finishes in the 3200, and senior James Migdal brought back a double victory with wins in both the high and long jumps. The boys ended the meet with their fastest 4x400m relay of the season, recording an impressive 3:41.13. Nonetheless at the end of the day we were not able to pull out the win.
Our younger athletes show that Monta Vista has a lot of potential for the future. The junior varsity girls rolled with a 106-11 victory, led by double victories from freshman Evelyn How (100 and 200) and sophomore Sabrina Hung (100m hurdles and 300m hurdles). Several other young athletes scored in multiple events, with sophomores Annabel Li and Rupali Sujan going 1-2 in the shot and 2-1 in the discus, and Reema Apte taking a first and a second in the long and triple jump. Anjali Thontakudi, Sanjana Borle, and Claire Chang, all freshmen, brought home wins in the 800, 1600 and 3200m distances. Sophomore Anita Narkhede added a win in the high jump. All these freshman and sophomore girls will be candidates to be strong options to join the varsity team next year, and if these young ladies maintain their strong work ethic and continue their development, Monta Vista’s young women will be strong contenders for years.
The frosh-soph boys had another back and forth battle that came down to the final event. While Monta Vista was not able to manage a win in any field event, however with sophomores Jeffrey Xu and Justin Lin going 1-2 in the 1600m, sophomore Eliot Lubormirsky a double winner in the 400m and the 200m, and Richard Dowd’s win in the 300m kept Monta Vista close. Strong team depth give Monta Vista 1-2-3 sweeps in both the 800m (Andy Fang followed by Justin and Jeffrey doubling back after their runs in the 1600m), setting the stage for the final event. Going in to the 4x400m relay, the score was 62-60 in favor of Wilcox; with the pressure on, Eliot Lubomirsky, Derek Zheng, Justin Lin and Akshay Gopalakrishnan brought home the victory and perfect dual meet season for Monta Vista! It will be interesting to see these sophomores and freshman join the varsity ranks over the next few years.
On May 2 and 4 at Saratoga, Monta Vista will advance to the El Camino League Championship meet.
Friday at Top 8:
Monta Vista sent three athletes to the Top 8 meet at Los Gatos high school. Brent Mogensen’s fast heat of of the varsity boys 1600 turned into a battle for survival, as the leaders took the pack out in a blistering 61 second first lap. This 4:04 mile pace was unsustainable, and in the end the athletes in that heat had to fight to earn their times despite the too-fast start. In the end, the meet champion came from the ‘slow’ heat as the more highly seeded runners as the aggressive strategy of the more highly ranked runners ultimately hurt them. It’s important to be aggressive in these big meets but intelligent and controlled race strategy matters too Brent was able to hang on for a 4:31.01, several seconds off his best. In the girls 800m race, Kelly Bishop went out aggressively and by 200 meters she established a strong position on the inside rail, hanging right off the leaders and defended her spot for the next 300 meters. At the 500m mark, Kelly was briefly boxed in which caused her to lose a few meters, but she kept her head and waited for her opening and with 120 meters to go she made a strong move to finish in fourth with a season best 2:16.19. Kelly executed her race plan intelligently and with heart. Namrata Subramanian finished up the night’s action for Monta Vista with a 12:06.91 in the 3200m. This was a strong field and Namrata did no havet her best race of the year, but she will be back with a strong race in the post season.
Saturday at the St. Francis Invitational:
St. Francis is a highlight of the season for both coaches and athletes at Monta Vista, and this was one of our best team performances ever. Our teams love the medley relays that St Francis includes. These are less-commonly run events, and our athletes like the chance to work together and support their teammates. I’ve often seen relays bring out the best in athletes; in the pursuit of supporting their teammates, the athletes extend themselves beyond what they think is possible and achieve relay splits beyond their current PRs. These team relays can lead to individual breakthoughs that will translate into personal PRs later.
As usual, the St Francis Invitational was stacked with strong teams and athletes that brought out the best in Monta Vista. Some of our highlights included:
- The frosh-soph girls distance medley relay team of Claire Chang, Evelyn How, Anjali Thontakudi and Sarah Feng took second place in hard fought battle; if the last leg was a lap longer, Sarah could have caught the leaders. She just ran out of track. The sprint medley team of Lauren Ling, Reema Apte, Evelyn How, and Alisha Gao also brought home a second place finish, the first time in at least six years that a sprint relay team from Monta Vista has ended up on the podium at St. Francis. All the girls in these relays are freshman, which is very encouraging for our future.
- The Monta Vista varsity boys DMR team (Brent Mogensen, Matthew Ho, Andy Ma and Bennett Zhang) and frosh-soph boys DMR (Andy Fang, Eliot Lubomirsky, Justin Lin and Jeffrey Xu) teams took home fourth and fifth places. The varsity boys in particular had a spirited effort, and I think that we are going to see something special in Leagues in 10 days.
- The co-ed 4x200m relay is an entertaining event, with the widely varying sizes and velocities of the handoffs, combined with the third hand off being unlaned and the enthusiasm of the fans leading to some wild results. Since every team is free to choose any order of boys and girls, there are dramatic lead changes and comebacks and total confusion about who is truly ‘ahead’ at any point in the race. Monta Vista has never been on the podium in the co-ed relay at St Francis, but Harshith Kumar, Eliot Lubomirsky, Evelyn How and Alisha Goa teamed up to take home first place in an exciting race that left the rest of the team hoarse from yelling!
- Monta Vista had three individual champions: Freshman Evelyn How in the FS girls 100m, Sophomore Eliot Lubomirsky in the FS boys 400m, and Derek Zheng in the FS boys triple jump. Evelyn’s time was the fastest frosh-soph girls time in the 33 year long history of the St Francis Invitational; setting an individual meet record at St. Francis is really remarkable. Evelyn was on the podium for four events (including all three of her relays); since St Francis awards t-shirts for podium finishes, Evelyn has given herself clothing for the next week! Eliot and Alisha had three podium finishes, two relays each to go with Eliot’s 400m win and Alisha’s third place in her individual 400m race. Other individual podium finishes were Andy Fang in the invitational FSB 800m race, and Kelly Bishop’s third place finish in the Varsity Girls’ mile, Jessica Ji’s third place tie in the high jump, and James Migdal’s second place finish in the varsity boys’ high jump.
As teams, with 44 teams attending, the varsity girls placed 25th, the varsity boys 15th, the frosh-soph boys took home an impressive 8th place and the frosh-soph girls came home in an amazing second place, holding off Palo Alto by .17 points! This is the highest finish in all the time I’ve been coaching Monta Vista.
Photos are available on our site.
Complete results are at these links: