The first week of March was busy and hectic! Monta Vista hosted two meets in the first week of the competitive season. Let’s quickly recap the action!
MV v MV
Dual meets are fun! And high school is pretty much the last place athletes can experience dual meets…colleges have mostly discontinued duals and have invites only. But dual meets are foundational for track culture. Duals are a time to try new things, to experiment…to have fun while competing hard. I’ve listened to so many alumni who compete in college, and they still come back to watch a dual meet, and they say to me “I forgot how fun dual meets are!”. Don’t take duals for granted!
Mountain View visited Monta Vista for the first dual meet of the 2023 SCVAL season on Wednesday, March 1. Mountain View is the pre-season pick for the top team in our league, so MVTF would have a solid challenge to find out where we stand. The meet got off to a rough start as the Matadors were swept in the 4×1 relays–but the varsity boys did post a 46.37 mark, only 0.23 seconds off last year’s season best of 46.14. That’s a solid season opener! If the boys build on Wednesday’s effort, they should end up solidly ahead of the 2022 edition of the relay.
The 1600m saw sophomore Tanay Parikh set a 16 second personal record with a 4:50.42 effort, holding off a charging Spartan for second place; later in the day he backed that up with another PR in the 800m. Sola Nojima was the top frosh-soph finisher in the 1600m for MV while running his first race in North America! Yvonne Chen opened close to her 2022 PR in the 110 hurdles, and soon after Ryan Samin recorded a PR in the 100m. Denny Dong scored a pair of firsts in the 400 and 800m. Later in the meet on the track, junior Margaux Francoeur scored a gigantic 3200m PR on the track, whacking more than a minute off her best time in the 8-lapper!
Off the track, the girls in the field events did serious damage. Junior Alice Ross won both shot and discus, while Lavinia Lei took second and third, earning 14 of 18 possible points in the varsity girls’ throwing events. Anika Manjesh was right with them scoring a 4th and a 5th. Nice work! Clara Fan and Lelani Laruelle went 1-2 in all the jumps–Clara first in high and long, Lelani in triple–as the girls took 24 of 27 possible varsity jump points. Both girls went over 30 feet in the triple. The varsity girls brought home 38 of 45 possible field event points! Holy smokes, what will win some meets down the road for the Field and Track team. The JV girls also made noice in the field events, with Gillie Ross winning shot and disc; the JVG discus was a sweep by MV as Aditi Chamarthy and Alex Sharma joined Gillie in the scoring. Sophomore Sunny Yao was out jumped by only one Mt. View senior in the long jump and barely edged by a Mt. View junior in the triple. Rahul Shankar tossed PRs in both shot and discus. For the frosh-soph boys, freshman Ryan Shen put up a 5′ high jump, super impressive height for a first high school event! Ryan added a 15’5″ jump for second in the long jump–he clearly has some hops.
In the end, Mountain View won all four divisions–though the varsity girls’ contest was really tight, 66 to 60, where five seconds in the right spot could have flipped the result. MVTF will be fine and very competitive down the road.
Complete results are posted on athletic.net.
The Seventh Annual RustBuster!
Over the past seven years, the RustBuster has grown to be a popular season opener for many of the leading CCS programs. Because of the COVID lockdown, the RustBuster is the longest continuously run Invitational in the California–because RustBuster 2020 happened five days before the lockdown, and a socially-distanced RustBuster was staged with Los Altos in 2021. Take that, Arcadia, we are unstoppable! The 2023 edition of the RustBuster was a classic–including with the weather, as we had clouds, cold, rain, sunshine, more rain, and a rainbow–that came during clean up, just to taunt your friendly meet director. During the frosh-soph girls 100m, the wind was blowing -3.0 m/s for heat one–and +1.0 m/s doing heat four, less than five minutes later! Freaky, for sure.
At 8:40am the frosh-soph 3200m boys lined up, and right on time our USA track and field starter Diego Certa shot the gun for the first race of the day. Tanay’s 10:43 earned him a silver medal for second place and Monta Vista’s first medal of the day! Ethan Lu followed up with a second place in the 110 hurdles; later Ethan would record a 43.39 PR in the 300h, earning a second silver medal. Denny Dong ran away with the 800 title, putting up a fine 2:02.49 clocking.
In the field events, the girls built on their momentum from Wednesday’s dual meet. In the varsity division, Alice took a fourth in the shot and Lavinia a third in the discus. Clara won the high jump with a 5′ clearance, added another gold in the long, and took a silver in the triple with a 33′-3″ jump using her opposite foot for the first time. Gillie won both throws in the frosh-soph division, and was joined on the discus podium by Fiona Rusak in fifth. Lauren Moore earned medals in triple and long. Freshman Agasthya Kothuri crushed a triple jump of 38′-4″! Sophomore Darren Lin had a huge day, winning two events with two PRs–the frosh-soph boys long jump with a 17′-7.5″ that is almost a foot longer than his best as a freshman, and triple with a 36′-4″. Ryan Shen and Joseph Han went 1-2 in the frosh-soph high jump with 5′-5″ and 5’2″ leaps.
As a team, Monta Vista finished a combined fourth among the twelve RustBuster schools, trailing only Los Altos, Lynbrook and Los Gatos–three local track powers. That’s solid, with a lot of medals in the hands of our kids! Well done, Monta Vista!
Teams headed home just after 3pm, the Monta Vista track was cleaned by 4pm, and we were headed home for showers and something warm to eat. Sweet! A good RustBuster for everyone.
Results are not finalized yet, but will be posted on athletic.net on Monday, March 6. Mr Ma has posted photos on the MV Flickr site, and Mr Slaney on his Flickr site. Both of these photographers have just started posting the photos they took at the meet, so check back to these sites in a couple of day–there will be more photos posted.
Parting Thoughts
This is only the first week of the season! We call our meet the RustBuster for a reason–this week has been an opportunity to knock the rust off our bodies and minds and start ramping up our competitive spirit. We need to remember what competition is like, we need to dust off the skills we use to compete at our best when we are under pressure, and we need to harden our mental callouses. Hopefully our experiences at the Mt. View dual meet and the RustBuster inspire us to greater efforts in practice and in competition over the coming weeks!
Success isn’t how far you got, it’s the distance you traveled from where you started.
~Steve Prefontaine
The process of becoming is better than being. Set big goals and learn to love the work that gets you there. Even if you fall short, you will be winning.
~Des Linden
