No one can say that Monta Vista track and field does not have patience. The Mountain View track and field team was scheduled to come for a dual meet on March 12, 2020…MVTF only had to wait until April 30, 2021 for the Mt. View bus to pull into our parking lot. If that is not being a good host, well, what is?
After that pandemic-enforced delay in start, MV v. MV finally got rolling on Friday, April 30 at 4pm sharp with the girls’ 4x100m. Senior Melannie Ooi lead off with the baton and the MVTF21 season was running!
Mountain View may be the largest and strongest team we will face this season which makes them a good test for our squad. After our opponents took both varsity 4×1 relays, Monta Vista struck back with UCSD-bound Sylvana Northrop and Caltech-commit Rohun Agrawal dominating the varsity 1600m races with solid victories; Syl outpaced the field by 13 seconds. Zoe Wang, who is headed to the Middlebury College track team, and Sotirios Kougiouris followed with wins in the varsity high hurdles, and MVTF hung tough in the 400 with Agnes Wang and Vishal Koppuru taking second spots. Justin Yu was barely out kicked for the second spot in the 800m–by a mere quarter of a second!–while Jannah Sheriff paced our team with a third place finish.
The boys’ throwing team showed a lot of power, as Eric Zheng and Sammy Banerjee went 1-3 in the discus and Henry Hodgkins and Eric took 2-3 in the shot (boys, I wish you would find a place to throw in college!). While the girls were swept in the shot, Vibha Iyengar’s 68′-7″ throw took third in the discus. And the girls’ throwing team has a bright future, not only with senior Melannie taking her first tosses but also with freshman Alice Ross chucking 26′-11″ and 78′-05″ in her first high school meet. The varsity boy jumpers had a tough time against bigger numbers from Mt. View, with Brandon Xu’s second place in the triple providing their only points, while Sammi Dunn and Zoe gave MV points in the all three jumps.
Back on the track, Zoe and Sotirios added two more first place finishes in the 300m hurdles. Syl and Rohun doubled back for two more wins in the 3200m race; Syl’s marks gave her the 3rd best 1600m and 4th best 3200m marks in MV history in the same meet! Mt. View held off MVTF in both 4x400m relays to close out the day, as the meet finished a few minutes ahead of schedule.
Monta Vista’s junior varsity girls won their team competition 66-59, while the other three divisions went down in defeat. It does seem like Mt. View may be our toughest meet, so if we keep working hard and improving our team results will come over the next few weeks.
PRs scored on Friday (including first event marks for the freshmen): Jonathan Chiang, Ethan Lu, Aakash Paraskar, Vincent Zhao, Aaron Ryoo, Alan Wen, Justin Yu, Pranav Reddy, Andrew Cole, Denny Dong, Max Ready, Ari Rajaram, Amogh Rajagopal, Rohun Agrawal, Alex Nguyen, Ethan Lam, Sotirios Kougiouris, Rahul Shankar, Vincent Fu, Sammy Banerjee, Maya Mizrahi, Katherine Shen, Iniyaa Suresh, Joshita Suresh, Agnes Wang, Natassha Ooi, Jasmine Varma, Megan Nieh, Ryland Adzich, Sylvana Northrop, Nikhita Saldi, Nerea Northrop, Insiah Kizilbash, Meena Kolli, Yvonne Chen, Melannie Ooi, Diya Sarin, Alice Ross, Anika Manjesh, Preetal Deshpande and Zoe Wang.
THANK YOU, thank you to every athlete and volunteer that helped out by picking up a hurdle, measuring a throw, helping to clean up the field after…anything you did to help make our first competition in 14 months a success.
Complete results are on athletic.net.
Next up for MVTF is Wilcox at Wilcox High School on Thursday, May 6 at 3:30pm.
Please note that team photo day will be on Tuesday, May 11 (not this week).
Alumni Notes:
Triya Roy, MVTF class of 2020, represented Johns Hopkins University in the Centennial Conference Track and Field Championships on Saturday, May 1. Triya earned all conference honors by taking fourth place in the 5000m championship race, bringing five points for Hop as Hopkins won the conference team championship. That’s a pretty great result for a freshman and a wonderful start to a college career!
