There is nothing quite like the sound of a starters’ pistol to signal the coming of Spring!–at least in the mind of a track and field athlete. At 9am on Saturday, March 7, the gun sounded to start a 3200m race at the Willow Glen Classic track and field invitational, and after five weeks of training the Monta Vista track team dug it’s spikes into the track for-real!
We had a pretty fine day, maybe the best start in years. Willow Glen is scheduled as a rust-buster, a chance to remember how to compete again. A rust-buster means that if we have a bad day, then it does not matter, and if we have a great day, then…wow that is amazing! It’s always more important to finish well than start well but…wow, did we start well! We had a lot of really good and even great days, with lots of PRs set as well as a big R. Pretty astounding way to spend our Saturday! The day was highlighted by three first place finishes by MVTF athletes:
–Rohan Choudhury ran a 9:43.08 to win the varsity 3200m race, with a time only 10 seconds off his PR.
–Kelly Bishop recorded a 2:15.58 mark in the 800m, winning Monta Vista’s second gold medal for the day. Both Kelly and Rohan ran great tactical races, they are both very smart racers as well as fit and brave. Kelly’s mark set a new Monta Vista all-time record for the 800m run, breaking a mark that had stood for more than ten years; Kelly’s mark is also one of the top 100 times every recorded by a girl in the Central Coast Section. Well done!
–Freshman Michael Sakellar sped to a 54.73 time to win the frosh-sopb boys’ 400m race, an excellent mark for Mikey’s first high school meet!
Overall, the team brought back a total of 15 medals, our biggest haul from WG ever I believe. In addition to our three firsts, other medalists:
–Justin Lin, FS Boys 800m
–Andy Ma, FS Boys 800m
–Vincent Kao, Eliot Lubomirsky, Andy Ma and Mikey Sakellar, FS Boys 4×400
–Jenny Xu, Varsity Girls 1600m
–Paru Meyyappan, FS Girls 1600m
–Madeleine Yip, Varsity Girls 3200m
–Elizabeth Ngo, FS Girls 300m intermediate hurdles
–Sanjna Bharadwaj, V Girls high jump
–Natalie Ohran, FS Girls high jump
For a total of 15 medals brought home from Willow Glen. Well done team!
In additional to the medal winners, we had many PRs set, I’m sure I will miss some (I apologize if I miss you!) but here we go: Gina Wang in both the 100m and 200m, Paru and Jenny in the 16oom, Kelly Bishop in the 800m, Bennett Zhang in the 1600m. There will be many, many more PRs to come this season!
We had 46 athletes compete in 73 events! Complete meet results can be found at Athletic.net. I posted some photos I took at our Picasa site, you can download these if you want; and Mr. Ma will have photos that he took available for all of us soon, too.
MVTF is back in action at Fremont High School next Tuesday, March 10 against Fremont and Homestead. We hope to see yo there!
