The last week of competition before the post-season saw the Monta Vista track and field athletes get locked in for the best races and competitions of their year!
The last league meet was a double-dual with Cupertino and Fremont on Wednesday, April 13. The Monta Vista girls came into the meet with an undefeated league record, and needed to have a successful day to stay unblemished. The girls gook care of business as they did all season, with a heavy dose of strength in the field events. Alice Ross, Lavinia Lei, Olivia Tsui, and Anoushka Lakshmi combined to take three of the top four spots in both discus and shot, while Clara Fan and Joshitha Suresh were all over the jump results. Valerie Ayzenberg and Avani Kalari were 1-2 on the track in the 400, Tufts-bound senior Vivian Lau took both the 800 and the 1600, Nikhita Saldi won the 3200, and Yvonne Chen held off a charging Fremont runner in the 300m hurdles to give the MVTF girls wins in every track event over 200m. The team results of 90-32 over Cupertino and 76-51 over Fremont allowed the girls to finish the league season a perfect 6-0!
Like the varsity girls, the Monta Vista frosh-soph boys and JV girls swept the team competitions against both Fremont and Cupertino. Tanay Parikh took both the 800m and 1600m for the boys, Parv Jain gave our squad first place in both hurdle events, Reese Myers was first in the high jump, while Darren Lin leaped furthest on the day in both long and triple. As the scores added up, the frosh-soph boys defeated both the Cupertino and Fremont teams. For the girls, Justine Garcia ran a PR 13.85 in the 100m to give Monta Vista a win at that distance to go with her win in the 200m, Jasmine Varma and Margaux Francoeur took the 400 and 800, Megan Nieh combined with Madi Polidoro and Nerea Northrop to sweep the 1600, with Manasi Prasad winning the 3200–and yes, you got that right, the JV girls won every flat track event from 100 to 3200m! Anika Manjesh, Michelle Zheng and Irene Tian gave the team plenty of points in throws and jumps to bring home the wins for the girls. The varsity boys had a tougher day as a team but still had individual highlights. Sophomore Ethan Lu ran a big PR of 16.03 to win the 110m hurdles, with Soti Kougiouris winning the 300m hurdles.
Three days later, a group of Monta Vista athletes headed to Los Altos for the first ever CCS Last Chance meet. This was a selective invitational, with entries needing to be accepted for athletes to compete. The meet turned into a PR-fest for Monta Vista:
- Alex Nguyen PR 10:34 in the 3200
- Ari Rajaram PR 10:36 in the 3200
- Ruhaan Shah PR 10:57 in the 3200
- Neal Jain PR 11:36 in the 3200
- Soti Kougiouris PR 41.14 in the 300m hurdles
- Valerie Ayzenberg PR 2:32 in the 800
- Jasmine Varma PR 2:43 in the 800
- Nikhita Saldi PR 5:22 in the 1600
- Margaux Francoeur PR 5:46 in the 1600
- Megan Nieh PR 6:04 in the 1600
- Madi Polidoro PR 6:06 in the 1600
- Anika Bhandarkar PR 12:28 in the 3200
Clara Fan, Denny Dong, Soti, Ethan, and Margaux all brought home hardware, too.
Add these PRs to new records set on Wednesday in the double-dual meet: Maya Mizrahi, Natassha Ooi, Justine Garcia, Varsha Iyengar, Varun Datta, Ryan Samin, Trevor Chan, Vibhav Pata, and Vedant Penjabi in the 100; Preetha Amara, Sean Basu, Hayden Selvakumar, and Varun in the 200; Valerie, Samhita Kashyap-Kiran, Avani Kalari, and Hemani Kamarshi in the 400; Vivian Lau, Margaux, Madi, Denny, Amogh Rajagopal and Tanay in the 800; Vivian, Jannah Sheriff, Ari, Hayden, Amogh, Sean and Tannay in the 1600; Manasi Prasad in the 3200 (Manasi later set a 5km PR on the road in the Big Bunny run!); Yvonne in the 100m hurdles, Ethan in the 110m hurdles, and Parv in the 65m hurdles; Ethan, Yvonne and Sophia Chen in the 300m hurdles too; Olivia, Strix Ryner, Patricia Diaz-Bian and Rahul Shankar in the shot; Alice, Lavinia, Michelle, Rahul and Daniel Mathew in the discus; Clara Fan went to the sky with a 5’3″ PR in the high jump, along with Irene Tian.
When a team puts together that many PRs in the last week of competition, that tells us that we are peaking at the right time! Not only the athletes listed above…everyone on the team has been doing the same training and the same workouts all season long. If these athletes can peak, so can everyone! We are ready, so ready, for the post-season.
Next up will be the El Camino League championship meet, at Cupertino High School. Trials will be on Wednesday afternoon, April 27 and finals on Friday, April 29. Watch this space for more information!
Results for Last Chance are here, and for the double-dual meet are here.
Ellie Hsu’s latest vblog is up, too.
