We have four meets to cover and practice starts in less than four hours! Let’s see what I can do…
(Don’t forget to download team photos.)
Santa Clara at Monta Vista
Following senior recognition, the Monta Vista varsity boys notched their first win of the dual meet season with a tight 65-61 victory over visiting Santa Clara, while the girls had two excruciatingly close losses–64-62 for the varsity girls and 60-57 for the JV squad. These are losses that could have been turned around with one MV second place finish, pushing a Santa Clara girl to third! Argh. The frosh-soph boys also fell to the Bruins, but nonetheless, all the squads showed that there are more wins to come this year. Highlights for the boys included a varsity boys 1-2 finish in the 400m by Denny Dong and Hayden Selvakumar, Ravi Polisetti and Ruhaan Shah getting another 1-2 in the frosh-soph boys 800, Ravi and Sola Nojima with another FSB 1-2 in the 1600m, Reese Myers getting a 5′-2″ PR in the high jump to match freshman Ryan Chen to take the top two varsity spots and then being part of a 1-2-3 sweep in the varsity triple together with freshman Agasthya Kothuri and Darren Lin. The varsity girls jumpers took 22 of 27 possible jump points with three wins by super sophomore Clara Fan, two seconds by Lelani Laruelle, and a third by senior novice jumper Avani Kalari (who doubled back in the 3200 and won that race!).
Santa Clara results have been posted.
Monta Vista will be back in SCVAL dual meet action with a visit to Wilcox next Thursday, March 30.
Azusa Meet of Champions
Fifteen distance runners traveled south to compete at Azusa MOC, which is basically Coachella for distance runners (I was going to write Woodstock but none of you would know what I was talking about). PRs were recorded by Ruhaan Shah, Ethan Yang, Tanay Parikh (his 10:05 has him knocking on the door of a sub-10 3200), Karena Lai, Madi Polidoro, Siran Gao, and Anika Bhandakar, and season bests were notched by Ari Rajaram, Margaux Francoeur, Avani Kalari, Megan Nieh, Nerea Northrop and Sydney Stevens. Lotsa, lotsa hardware, too!
Check out the results and get a feel for how big this event really is!
Lynbrook Invitational
The sprinters and throwers went across town to compete in the first year of the Lynbrook Invitational. Ethan Lu, Aaron Hung, Ben Chen, Yvonne Chen and Raje Kenyan all scored PRs in the 100m or 200m sprints. Ethan got another PR in the 119 hurdles, and Lourdes Diaz nabbed a PR of her own in the 100m hurdles. Senior Lavinia Lei tossed the discus 96′-4″ for a PR, and long enough take a second place medal; Alice Ross joined her on the medal stand with a third place finish. Fiona Rusak, Alex Sharma, Gillie Ross and Max Ready also achieved PRs in one or both of the throwing events. Complete results for Lynbrook are posted.
Firebird Relays
Coach Samantha Louie took the jumpers and a few others to the Firebird Invitational. Besides being held at Fremont High School, the site of Coach Sam’s high school glory days, Firebird holds field event ‘relay’ competition–the school’s top three jumpers or throwers marks are combined and compared to other schools’ three-person teams. Clara, Lelani and Joey Suresh must thing this is pretty great, as they swept the top spot of the team competition for all three jumps–high, long and triple!–while Clara took first or second in all three and Lelani added a third in high jump. Yes, that is 13 medals for these three girls in one invitational! Amazingly, these three athletes alone had a second place team finish for the Varsity Girls division! We will check them for strained necks at practice today–all those medals are heavy. Jenna Bergendahl added PRs in the shot, long jump and triple jump. Joseph Han got a 5′-4″ PR in the high jump and combined with Darren and Ryan for a FS jump team award, while Varun Datta, Reese, Agasthya, Ekundayo Davies and Ryan Xia also got jump PRs. Soham Beesetti also had a PR in the 800m. And, yes, we have results for Firebird posted.
