On Friday, May 14, Monta Vista track and field hosted the Santa Clara Bruins and the Fremont Firebirds in a double-dual track meet. In a double-dual meet, while three teams compete together, the contests are scored in pairs–Monta Vista’s team results are scored against Fremont, and against Santa Clara, separately.
After a challenging start with the 4x100m relays, Monta Vista athletes got serious. Sylvana Northrop and Jannah Sheriff went one-two in the 1600m, with Sylvana setting a personal record 5:07.77 (no MV girl has broken 5 minutes–yet!). Rohun Agrawal and Justin Yu added a 1-2 finish for the boys in their 1600m, with Justin adding a PR of his own at 4:46.58 (closing in on coach’s high school PR). Zoë Wang followed with a win in the high hurdles with Soti Kougiouris adding a second place finish while setting a 16.48 PR.
Freshman Valerie Ayzenberg, in her first meet as a varsity competitor, chipped in a second place finish in the 400m. Andrew Cole showed team spirit by pulling off his sweats and pulling on his spikes at a moment’s notice to give MV a second place finish in the 400m…there were only a few runners in that race and these points could have been crucial. Andrew’s willingness to chip in and help the team (he has also jumped into hurdle events) is a great trait and almost gave MV one more victory–more on that later.
Sammi Dunn and Jonathan Chiang gave Monta Vista second place finishes in both varsity 100m sprints, while Sylvana followed up with another win in the 800. For the boys, Justin Yu, Andrew Richardson and Andrew Cole gave MV it’s first 1-2-3 sweep of all the scoring spots in an event of the day, with Justin and Andrew C both recording PRs. Zoë added a second win in the 300mH and Soti chipped in with another second place finish.
In the field events, throwers were adding points to the MV totals, as Eric Zheng scored a discus first and a shot put runner up, while Henry Hodgkins added a 3rd place in the shot. Freshman Alice Ross, also in her first varsity competition, PRed by over a foot in the discus, throwing a 79′-9″ toss to win the girls division by a mere four inches. Zoë added a win in the long jump and a second in the triple to her two track victories, while Brandon Xu contributed wins in both the long and triple jumps–and Parky Sood, triple jumping for the first time ever, added a third place finish. Sammi won the high jump with a 4’10” leap, keeping her undefeated in dual meets this season.
Back on the track, Nikhita Saldi, Vivian Lau and Upasana Dilip romped to a sweep in the 3200m for the girls, while Rohun and Pranav Reddy went 1-3 for the boys. The boys and girls both won their 4×400 relay contests to finish the day.
In the double-dual team results, Monta Vista’s frosh-soph boys split on the day, defeating Santa Clara while falling to the Fremont boys. The MVTF junior varsity girls won against both schools. Our varsity girls won both their team matchups handily also. The varsity boys beat Santa Clara, but lost by a single point to Fremont–61 to 60. Andrew Cole’s second place finish gave the team three points that pulled Monta Vista within a single point, and if we had one more boy in the 400m that would have given our squad a tie! Then one more 300m hurdler, or a high jumper who could have scored a clearance, could have given our team another win. So close! We tend to think about track and field as an individual sport, but there are always opportunities to help the team…jumping into events like Andrew does, or trying a new event as Parky did with triple jump. Not only can you help your team, you might find something else you are good at!
Personal records truly matter, as PRs show that we are continuing to improve, train to become more skilled and strong, and that we get more and more out of the genetic talents we have inherited; personal records are a way of demonstrating our grit and self-control. Personal records set at the double-dual include marks by: Jonathan Chiang, Aaron Ryoo, Hayden Selvakumar, Adrian Du, Agnes Wang, Katherine Shen, Yvonne Chen, Anika Manjesh, Jasmine Varma (all in the 100m), Adrian Du, Max Ready, Sammi Dunn, Valerie Ayzenberg, Agnes Wang (in the 200m), Andrew Cole, Sean Basu, Ethan Lu, Valerie Ayzenberg again, Melannie Oii, Iniyaa Suresh (400), Justin Yu, Andtew Cole, Amogh Rajagopal, Nerea Northrop, Lillian Wang (by 13 seconds!) (800m), Amogh Rajagopal, Sylvana Northrop, Nerea Northrop (1600m), Pranav Reddy, Denny Dong, Ari Rajaram, Nikhita Saldi, Upasana Dilip, Ryland Adzich, Megan Nieh (more than two minutes clear of her time trial time last October during cross) (3200m), Soti Kougiouris, Zoë Wang (high hurdles), Soti, Ethan Lu, Yvonne Chen (low hurdles), Rahul Shankar, Diya Sarin, Preetal Deshpande (shot), Rahul, Vincent Fu, Arnav Latkar, Alice Ross, Lavinia Lei (discus), Zoë, Joey Suresh (long jump), and Parky Sood (triple).
Complete results can be found at the Lynbrook site.
Robert Ma, the parent of MVTF alumni Andrew Ma and Katherine Ma, was on hand to take photographs he posted to share with all of us.
Next up for MVTF will be a visit to Saratoga High School on Thursday, May 20, starting at 3:30pm. Spectators are welcome, according to the Saratoga coach! If you want to see your athletes attend, please come. Spectators are asked to sit in the visitor (smaller) stands, with masks on and socially distanced. The ‘toga track is a fun site. We hope to see you there!
