Monta Vista hosted our first ever track invitational on Saturday March 4, and it was a smashing success!
Evergreen Valley, Fremont, Gunn, Half Moon Bay, Menlo-Atherton and Milpitas brought their squads to compete at the RustBuster Invitational. It was something to see if you were there all day…before 6am there was no one on the track (except for Coach Flatow laying out sector markings), by 9am the field and the stands were packed…by 2pm the center of the field was jammed and going nuts for the meet ending 4×4 relays…and by 3:30pm, Monta Vista athletes were picking up the last couple water bottles to leave the field sparkling-clean. We really loved seeing the Monta Vista facilities used so well by 600 great kids. What a start to a new tradition!
Monta Vista had many standout performances. Alisha Gao and Eliot Lubormirsky twinned with matching Varsity 400m championships, both improving their season marks from the 400 Shootout; Reema Apte was right behind Alisha in the VG400 with a personal best 65.44 to give MV a 1-2 finish. Kelly Bishop also give MV a first place medal in the 800m, as did Paru Meyyappan in the 3200m. Paru’s win came with a stirring finish, holding off a charging Evergreen Valley runner for a victory with less than a second to spare.
In the boys’ 3200m races, Monta Vista again twinned with matching runner-up finishes, Bennett Zhang for the varsity boys and Nitin Subramanian in the frosh-soph division. Junior Steven Ataee, in his first appearance for MVTF, took second in the shot with a 38′ toss; that is his first competition ever and would have been the 12th best throw in the El Camino league last year. We think that Steven has a lot of potential and is just getting started. Three of the lady Monta Vista high jumpers were over 4’9″ in their first competion of the season; Jessica Ji and Mahima Shanware both cleared 4’10” to take 3rd and 4th in varsity, while newcomer freshman Catherine Cole had a 4’9″ jump to take home gold in the frosh-soph division. Not a bad way to start your high school career, Catherine! Another stand out event group for Monta Vista were the triple jumping girls. Cynthia Gong, Jessica Ji, and newcomer freshman Jasmine Lee all flew over 30′, bringing home three medals including the frosh-soph gold for Jasmine. Judge Erica McLain, who was a 2008 Olympian, told Coach Flatow that Jasmine has some serious skills, it is going to be fun to keep an eye on this group!
The Rustbuster closed with the 4x400m relays, the traditional end to any track meet. The Monta Vista kids saved some of their best work until last, sweeping all four relays–FS and Varsity, Boys and Girls! Coach John McKeeman was proud of that accomplishment; it’s hard to explain how far this team has come in the 4×4 (but I will try at a later date).
The 4×400 was decisive for two teams. In the Varsity Boys division, Evergreen Valley came into the last event in second place but passed Lynbrook with their 4×4 performance. And in the Varsity Girls division, Monta Vista did the same; trailing Menlo-Atherton coming into the relays, the Varsity girls 4×4 team of Evelyn How, Reema Apte, Alisha Goa and Kelly Bishop brought home both the gold medal and the team championship plaque with a wire-to-wire relay win!
Some other PRs include Matt Gong and Akshay Gopalkrishnan in the 400m, Derek Lee in the 3200m, Jeremy Tien in the 65m hurdles, Lauren Ling in the 400m, Anjali Thontakudi in the 1600m, Anushka Tandon in the 3200m (I did not include people competing for their first time at MV).
A big, big thank you to every parent, teacher and kid who volunteered and helped make the meet a success. Putting on a track and field invitational for the first time is a huge undertaking and we could not have done this without you!
And MVTF…we are truly proud of you. You represented your team, your school, your families and yourselves very well yesterday. You should be proud of yourselves, too.
Great job, everyone!
Complete meet results are at athletic.net.
