(See pictures taken by Ryan Liu)

It was a great day to get League competition started for Monta Vista Track & Field as we faced off against Milpitas in a dual meet at their home track. Overall, our efforts were led by Denny Dong, Katie Lee, Clara Fan, Alice Ross, and Tanay Parikh who all had multiple individual wins. Dong had a perfect day winning 4 out of 4 events, including the 200m, 400m, 800m, and the 4x400m relay. Lee sprinted her way to a pair of victories in the 100m-200m double and was also on the winning 4x100m relay. Fan won the HJ and TJ and was also part of the winning 4x100m relay. Ross took care of business in the throws taking the SP-DT double-win. Lastly, Parikh brought home 10 points winning both the 1600m and 3200m. This group of athletes named above are people you should be paying attention to – look to them as an example! Don’t look to them just because they are winning though, look to them because they push themselves to be the best they can be and put themselves in the position to make the biggest impact on the overall team’s performance.

I think a fair number of you are looking to your leaders as examples, because we had 54 PRs (personal records) set at Milpitas – that’s just fantastic!! That number does not include athletes won got their first mark in their respective events, but if that was you, those marks are now your PRs. As we go through the rest of the season, we want to build on what we have done so far. However, the pattern may not will not be linear. What I mean by that is: you won’t always PR. That’s completely okay and expected! You’ll have a bad race and you’ll have scratches on the runway or in the ring. But you keep working in practice and make it better for next time – that’s all we can do to respond to bad meets.

image0_Original

First up, I’ll cover the action on the girl’s side. Our JV girls fell to Milpitas, but had a very strong showing. The varsity girls ended up defeating Milpitas quite comfortably – great job ladies! The field events absolutely dominated for both varsity and JV. On the varsity side, field scored 35 of the 71 total points. For JV, field scored 35.5 of the 46.5 – that’s incredible! Aside from Ross killing it for the throws, we almost swept the VG HJ, missing the 3rd spot only by number of attempts (Dylan Hwang tied the height of 3rd place but took more attempts, resulting in a solid 4th place finish). We swept the JVG DT, SP, and TJ *exploding brain emoji*. Fan and L. Laruelle went 1-2 in all 3 jump events. We did great on the track as well with Lee’s mentioned performance, plus going 1-2 in the VG 3200m was Anika Bhandarkar and freshman Miranda Hsu.

PXL_20240306_234417445_exported_37083_Original

On the boys side, we weren’t able to take home the team victory for either division, but we had a very strong showing all around. Along with Dong and Parikh’s performance, Ryan Shen had a three 2nd place finishes in all three of the jumps (HJ, LJ, TJ) with his long jump of 19’ 9” getting dangerously close to top 10 in school history. Shen was also part of the winning 4x400m relay, filling in for an injured athlete.

Side note: A couple of missing athletes on the boys varsity side really made the difference in the outcome of the meet. I say that not to push blame but to highlight the importance of keeping yourselves healthy. Sickness is going around and your body fights that off best when it is sufficiently rested; GET YOUR SLEEP! We also need to make sure we hydrating well and taking our warm ups seriously at practice AND at meets.

We’re back in action next week at home against Saratoga for another dual meet. That’s taking place on Thursday, March 14th starting at 4pm. On Saturday, March 16th we have the optional St. Francis Invitational which starts at 8:30am. If you want to go, please tell your coach so you can be entered. We are allowed to enter however many kids we want, but St. Francis will be institute a cutoff for each event based on the seed time.

See below for the full listing of event winners and PRs!

PXL_20240307_013613739_Original

21 Event Wins –

Girls (14)

  • VG 4x100m relay made up of Katie Lee, Zoe Laruelle, Clara Fan, Lelani Laruelle
  • Katie Lee – VG 100m & 200m
  • Raji Kenyan – VG 300mH
  • Anika Bhandarkar – VG 3200m
  • Clara Fan – VG HJ & TJ
  • Lelani Laruelle – VG LJ
  • Alice Ross – VG SP & DT
  • Jasmine Zhao – JVG HJ
  • Lauren Moore – JVG TJ
  • Allie Rummelhoff – JVG SP
  • Fiona Rusak – JVG DT

Boys (7)

  • Tanya Parikh – VB 1600m & 3200m
  • Denny Dong – VB 400m & 800m & 200m
  • VB 4x400m relay made up of Manas Kottakota, Malek Shalluf, Ryan Shen, Denny Dong (thank you for stepping up, Malek and Ryan!)
  • Alex Frefel – JVB 300mH (beat everyone in Varsity too!)

54 Total PRs!

Girls (18)

  • VG 1600 – Anika Bhandarkar – dropped another 10 seconds!
  • VG 800 – Madi Polidoro – by almost 1 second!
  • VG HJ – Lelani Laruelle – tied at 5’2”!
  • VG TJ – Lelani Laruelle – by 5 inches!
  • VG SP – Maya Pullara – by over 2 feet!
  • VG DT – Maya Rullara – by over 4 feet!
  • JVG TJ – Evan Greene – by 5.5 inches!
  • JVG SP – Sofia Schilling – by over 3 feet!
  • JVG 800 – Mira Ram – by half a second!
  • JVG 800 – Annalise Gorts – by 7 seconds!
  • JVG 400 – Felicity Ho – by 3 seconds!
  • JVG 100 – Lillaka Ruffin – by .4 seconds!
  • JVG 100 – Avery Whiting – by .4 seconds!
  • JVG HJ – Jasmine Zhao – tied at 4’!
  • JVG HJ – Rafaela Maglaque – tied at 3’6”
  • JVG LJ – Jasmine Zhao – 1 foot 4.5 inches!
  • JVG LJ – Rafaela Maglaque – 7 inches!
  • JVG DT – Rafaela Maglaque – by almost 13 feet!

Boys (36)

  • VB 110H – Ethan Zhu – by 1.8 seconds!
  • VB 400 – Manas Kottakota – by .70 seconds!
  • VB 100 – Jeffrey Song – by .3 seconds!
  • VB 100 – Rishi Bhagatwala – by .05 seconds!
  • VB 100 – Graham Ischo – by .12 seconds!
  • VB 100 – Ben Chen – (wind legal PR) by .05 seconds!
  • VB 100 – Hyonjin Kim – by .08 seconds!
  • VB 800 – Tanya Parikh – by 2 seconds!
  • VB 800 – Ryan Liu – by 3 seconds!
  • VB 200 – Denny Dong – by .13 seconds (sub 23)!
  • VB 200 – Rishi Bhagatwala – by 2 seconds!
  • VB 200 – Ben Chen – by .7 seconds!
  • VB HJ – Ryan Shen – by 2 inches!
  • VB LJ – Ryan Shen – over 2 feet!
  • VB LJ – Graham Ischo – by 1 foot!
  • VB LJ – Ben Chen – by over 2 feet!
  • VB TJ – Ben Chen – by almost 2 feet!
  • VB SP – Alexander Zeng – by almost 3 feet!
  • VB SP – William Levison – by almost 1 foot!
  • VB SP – Nate Diaz – by 3.5 inches!
  • VB DT – William Levison – by almost 20 feet!
  • VB DT – Graham Ischo – by 8 inches!
  • VB DT – Eddie Fan – by over 2 feet!
  • VB DT – Nate Diaz – by 8 inches!
  • VB DT – Rishabh Prabhu – by over 5 feet!
  • JVB 1600 – Justin Yaung – by 8 seconds!
  • JVB 1600 – Brandon Wang – by 8 seconds!
  • JVB 400 – Alex Frefel – by 2 seconds!
  • JVB 400 – Ivan Shilakhov – by 2.5 seconds!
  • JVB 400 – Jayden Pang – by .38 seconds!
  • JVB 100 – Harris Shaikh – by .02 seconds!
  • JVB 100 – Eric Fernandes – by .43 seconds!
  • JVB 3200 – Qi Huang – by 12 seconds!
  • JVB LJ – Dayo Davies – almost 4 feet!
  • JVB SP – Kingston Jourdan – by 2 inches!
  • JVB SP – Sean Malone – by over 3 feet!