Monta Vista track and field opened their league season in style in a dual meet at Wilcox High School on Wednesday, March 7.
MVTF took the wraps off the 4×100 varsity teams and Evelyn How, Brooke and Bianca Young, and Kelli Kosakura put up a solid 51.98 to win their race and get our season rolling. The MV JV girls and Frosh-Soph boys relays also recorded victories, and the relay races set the tone for the rest of the meet. At the end of the day, the Monta Vista Varsity girls and Junior Varsity girls, as well as the Frosh-Soph boys, all recorded season opening wins while the Varsity boys went down in defeat to open the year.
Along the way, we had many notable performances. The sprint races, while persistently bothered by a strong 3-4 kph wind in the face, showed strength. Brooke Young, demonstrating an interesting starting technique, had wins in the 100 and 200 while her twin Bianca gave us the 400m. The 400m all day had wild splits, with Eliot Lubomirsky perhaps the clearest example of a screaming first half in 22/23 before being stood up with the wind and coming home in 53 for his win. Guna Vengalasetti had a 400m Pr despite the wind. Tarun Sarang run a 12.5 into the wind to take the FSB 100, a time that would have been in our top 10 last year irregardless of the wind. Sai Vishal Koppuru took the 200m for the FSB, followed by Gavin John and Henry Lassa who fit right into track after their soccer and wrestling seasons ended. Kids from other sports often have a lot of success when they choose track and field for their off-season as we saw in this race. Zoe Wang stepped up for the varsity girls and delivered wins in both hurdle races for 10 valuable points.
In the distance races, we had a couple of just misses as Triya Roy and Lauren Ling came in at 12 for the 32o0 and 6 for the 1600; 11:59 and 5:59 sound a lot better and we know that these two athletes will hit their goals soon! Aravind Meyyappan, Derek Lee and Vishal Sodem all had 800m PRs, and Sarah Feng had an exciting race in her 800 as Sarah ran down an Wilcox athlete opened a 40m lead in the opening lap, followed by Anjali Thontakudi and Lauren Ling to give MV a sweep that did not seem possible half way into the race. Justin Lin, Jeff Flewelling and Sri Ananta also had early season PRs in the Wilcox wind, and Claire Lin notched a sub-14 3200 time in her first attempt at this distance.
Field events racked up points for MV. The girl varsity high jumpers took every point offered (we could use some more high jumping girls to fill out our depth through the JV division). Sarang Deshpande had a PR in long jump and won the triple jump also for the frosh-soph boys, and our FS boys demonstrated a lot of depth and skill in the triple overall–Coach Leah Tapscott has high hopes for this squad. Jasmine Lee also had a long jump PR and scored 8 points in the LJ and TJ. Muthuaravind Subramanian had shot and discus PRs.
This write up is just a taste of the afternoon; dual meets have lots of drama and laughs and subplots. As the sun set and we finished the 4x400m relays in the dark, with splits and timing becoming hopeless, anyone at the meet had to be enjoying the spectacle. There really is nothing like a high school dual meet! We hope to see all of the track and field family out supporting our athletes at all our dual meets. Our next league dual will see MVTF matched against the Saratoga Falcons, at Saratoga High School, on Thursday March 22. We hope to see you there!
Thank you to Mr. Ma (Katherine) for the great photos. Complete results are posted on-line.
