On Thursday, April 7, the undefeated Monta Vista varsity girls traveled to meet the undefeated Mountain View varsity girls in a dual meet…only one team would remain perfect!
After Mt. View picked up the 4×100 relay points, Vivian Lau got MVTF on the board as she won the 1600m with a season best 5:33.88 (only a second off her personal record). Natassha Ooi added a second place in the 100m, and Avani Kalari, Valerie Ayzenberg and Jannah Sheriff earned a sweep of all nine points in the 800m. Yvonne Chen added a hard-fought second in the 300m hurdles with her 54.51 personal record mark. Natasshi earned another point with her third place finish in the 200m, and Ellie Hsu took second in the 3200m, before the varsity girls 4×400 team earned a win. With the track events tallied, Monta Vista trailed 48-3o.
But that was before field events were recorded! Clara Fan and Vivian Lau went 1-3 in high jump, Clara and Joey Suresh were 1-2 in long jump, Joey and Clara reversed order to go 1-2 in triple jump. Alice Ross and Lavinia Lei took first and second in the shot, while Lavinia won discus with a big PR of 87’11”, Anoushka Laskshmi added a PR 85’7″ for second while Alice took third. Overall the field eventers brought home 39 of 45 points, giving the Monta Vista girls a 69-54 victory to remain undefeated!
Let’s recognize the entire varsity team on Thursday: 1600m Vivian Lau (1st) and Sydney Stevens; 100m hurdles Yvonne Chen; 100m Natassha Ooi (2nd) and Joey Suresh (3rd); 800m Avani Kalari (1st), Valerie Ayzenberg (2nd) and Jannah Sheriff (3rd): 300m hurdles Yvonne Chen (2nd); 200m Natassha Ooi (3rd) ; 3200m Ellie Hsu (2nd); 4x400m relay Valerie Ayzenberg, Jannah Sheriff, Avani Kalari and Sydney Stevens (1st) ; high jump Clara Fan (1st) and Vivian Lau (3rd); long jump Clara Fan (1st) and Joey Suresh (2nd); triple jump Joey (1st) and Clara (2nd); shot Alice Ross (1st), Lavinia Lei (2nd), Olivia Tsui, Diya Sarin, Patricia Diaz-Bian, Anoushka Lakshmi and Strix Ryner; discus Lavinia (1st), Anoushka (2nd), Alice (3rd), Olivia, Diya, Patricia, and Strix. Well done, ladies!
While the varsity girls were the only Monta Vista team to post a victory on Thursday, there were plenty of other strong performances. Denny Dong ran the 200m for the first time this season and posted a victory, Sotirios Kougiouris and Ethan Lu scored PRs in the 110m hurdles while finishing 1-2, Ethan added another PR in the 300m hurdles. There were plenty of PRs to be found: Hayden Selvakumar, Hyojin Kim, Ian Gee, Parv Jain, Joey Suresh, Katherine Shen, Preethi Amari (100m), Parv Jain, Natassha Ooi, Samhita Kashyap Kiran (200m), Ethan Lam, Varun Datta, Ryan Samin, Neal Jain, Vibhav Pata (400m), Ari Rajaram, Amogh Rajagopal, Ruhaan Shah, Avani Kalari (800m), Anika Bhandarkar, Manasi Prasad (1600m), Soti, Ethan Lu (110mH), Yvonne Chen (100mH), Soti, Ethan, Yvonne, Raje Kenyan (300mH), Arnav Latkar, Rahul Shankar (shot), Rahul, Lavinia Lei, Anoushka Lakshmi (discus), Tanay Parikh (triple jump), Vivian Lau, Hemani Kamarshi (high jump), Nishika Gorla (long jump).
Complete results are posted, as are photos taken by Agnes Wang.
MVTF completes it’s dual meet season, with the varsity girls trying to go 6-0, with a tri-meet at Cupertino with Fremont on Wednesday, April 13.
Burning Batons at the De Anza Invitational
Monta Vista relay teams had a blast at the De Anza Invitational on Saturday, April 9–Monta Vista entered three teams and came away with three meet championships!
MV coaches like relays, and the team entered three relay races at the De Anza Invitational. The frosh-soph girls entered a squad in the distance medley relay (1200-400-800-1600m): Margaux Francoeur, Katie Lee, Valerie Ayzenberg and Anika Bhandarkar. The frosh-soph boys also entered a team: Tanay Parikh, Neal Jain, Rahuul Shah and Denny Dong. And finally, the varsity boys had a 4x400m team of Sean Basu, Hayden Selvakumar, Ethan Lu and Soti Kougiouris.
Margaux and Tanay both ran strong opening 1200m legs for their relay teams. The girls continued to build about Margaux start, and their time of 14:07 ended up a full minute ahead of Willow Glen. The boys had a bit more of a challenge, but still ended up with a seven second win over runner up Leland high school.
The varsity boys found themselves hooked up in a real battle! After several lead changes in the first three legs, both Atwater and Fremont high school teams went by Soti on the last turn of the the anchor leg. Soti thought about passing back immediately but waited until the middle of the last curve when he moved outside and accelerated to the front. Soti held the lead and the three teams came in bang-bang-bang: MVTF 3:37.75 for first, Fremont 3:38.88 for second, and Atwater 3:39.37 for the bronze medal position. Hayden said the race was the most fun of any relay he has been a part of, and the crowd sure was going nuts!
Other MVTF athletes had fine days at De Anza. Vivian Lau ran a 12:02 to take third place in the 3200m. Alex Nguyen and Ari Rajaram also had PRs in the 3200m. Avani Kalari and Megan Nieh earned personal records in the 1600m. Before forming half of the 4×400 relay team, Soti and Ethan went 1-3 for medals in the 400m hurdles, and Ethan added a silver medal and a PR in the 110m hurdles for three medals (one in each color!) on the day.
Complete results for the De Anza Invitational are posted.
Time Machine
One year ago today, on April 10, 2021, Hank Lawson and Coach Flatow hosted the Last Chance Cross Country Invitational…during the pandemic, five athletes ran the Crystal Springs cross country course, one got lost, in the last race of the 2020 pandemic winter XC season. There were no t-shirts for sale, no medals, kind of disappointing in retrospect. But here are a couple thoughts to blow your mind a bit…
- Last year at this time we were wrapping up the cross country season…this year, we are almost done with track season. Whoa.
- Rohun Agrawal set a new Monta Vista course record, and has the 81st Crystal mark all-time, with only four other runners in the race! Next time you think ‘oh, I need to go to <insert name of your favorite big time invitational here> in order to set a PR/make a mark/impress some coach”, think about what Rohun did. It’s not that being at Stanford, Mt. SAC, Arcadia, Clovis or whatever doesn’t help, and a big event is a lot of fun…but need? Granted, Rohun has incredible determination, but all of us have the ability to dig deep and get more out of a given situation.
Extra Credit
This column is worth a read.
“But for anyone facing relentless pressure to win, positive feedback can sometimes become more stifling than motivational: Instead of loving what you do, you start loving how well you do it. You start seeing losing as a crisis — and when your passion also becomes your job, as in professional sports, that isn’t exactly wrong. Then when you inevitably stumble, you break.”