All week, we were wondering if the weather would cooperate for the Monta Vista-Los Gatos dual meet. The storm kept being delayed; on Tuesday morning the hourly forecast on my iPhone said rain at 3pm. And that forecast was, finally, and unfortunately, correct!
I’m not sure this weather is looking good…2:15pm.
At 2 o’clock, as the MV track team scrambled for space underneath the snack-shack overhang, the first big raindrops began to fall and the wind began to pick up. This was not going to be a PR day! After the meet got started, about 20 minutes late, the sprinkling turned into a steady rain. And by the time the hurdlers got going, the rain was coming down hard and the wind was blowing steadily in their faces!
Your coaches are very proud of your ability to put up with adverse conditions. While I listened to a lot of ‘can you believe this weather?’ talk, I did not hear a lot of negativity. There was understandable disappointment about the conditions; we are half-way through the season and some athletes are getting in condition where they are looking to breakthrough with new personal best results, so it’s reasonable to want some good track weather by now. However, our team was philosophical, with comments ranging from senior hurdler Ryan Chui’s ‘there is always one meet like this every season’ [the senior who has seen it all] to frosh high jumper Hannah Ho’s ‘that was fun, like jumping into a swimming pool’ [the freshman who is up for anything].
Hurdling in the rain
There were even some unexpected high points. The horizontal jumpers were jumping straight into a headwind, and Coach McLain said the jumpers were practically being blown backward at points; yet Sayali Khare hit her longest triple of the season! The jumpers are at the point in the season where I expect we are going to see some significant breakthroughs. New high jumper Sanjna Bharadwaj cleared 4’2″, the first time she has been above 4′ in competition. Experimentation seems to show that having a tailwind does not help shot put distance 🙂 (isn’t that just what you would expect–the only event where the area had the wind to the competitor’s back was the shot? The one event where wind was useless? If the jumpers had been running with the wind at their back they could have jumped back to Cupertino!).
‘Like jumping into a swimming pool’
Finally, after the 400M, the coaches agreed to cancel or postpone the rest of the meet. None of us know the rule exactly so we will need to check with the league to see what we are going to do. Stay tuned.
Coaches: Are we sure we want to be doing this?
Although we called the meet, many of the MV runners who were scheduled for the 800M were all warmed up and pleaded to be able to run anyway. So Coach Matt Paquet got out his stopwatch, and Ajay, Chloe, Neha, Sarah and several others toed the line. It was amazing to see the MV middle distance team running out there in the pouring rain! Neha even bested her 800PR from last year (though not this year). So hard-core! The look on the Los Gatos head coach’s face was great…he was impressed. Monta Vista athletes are very tough, very hard-core, and I had a lot of fun making comments about your grit to the LG coaches!
This is WET!
You guys are great! I hope you all got warm, some sleep…and have good memories about a very imperfect day!
We are half way through the season and have not had great track weather for a meet yet. Willow Glen was probably the best weather, but that was a rust-buster meet. Cupertino was windy, Wilcox was windy and hand-timed, St. Francis was colder than cold and West Valley was wet too. Don’t worry, we are due for good weather, and we will get some at some point! Keep working and the PRs will come!
(All photos from Ezra Gordon of ezragordon.com…thank you, Ezra!)
Good spirits in all conditions!
Girls get started in the 1600
Frosh-Soph boys line up for their 1600M race
In Oregon, this is good racing weather!
Good hurdling form…or is he just pushing the rain out of his eyes?
Not sure this is fun yet! But maybe it is…
Can we call this a day? Please?