The sun was shining, the weather warm and the scent of the starter’s gun was in the air as the 2020 Monta Vista 400m Shootout got underway on the beautiful home track of the Monta Vista Matadors. From the first race to the last, excitement was palpable as this year’s squad was itching to lace up their spikes and test their fitness against the clock!
Leading things off as always, Monta Vista’s throwers stepped on the track and flashed their speed. Sanmitra Banerjee raced around the track and held off his thrower compatriots, retaining the Thrower’s Title he won in 2019. To earn his back-to-back championship, Sammy stayed calm as Nicholas Hsieh went out fast in lane 7. Showing his mettle as defending champion, Sammy maintained his form and cracked out a whopping 4 second improvement over last year’s win, setting a high standard of 61.81 as the time to beat after only 2 races!! Next up was our featured heat of lady throwers – a highlight for all the coaching staff as this group has developed tremendously over the past year! Tabitha Mendez won the inaugural Girls’ Thrower race in style, taking a monster 8 seconds off her PR! For her efforts Tabitha takes home a bouquet of roses and the team will share a slew of air fresheners to fend off the offending odors of the MV weight room…
After the throwers warmed up the track the Shootout moved on with typical efficiency, as Coach Flatow’s itchy trigger finger kept heats moving and Sean Chen and his crew of workers had things humming at the start/finish line. Subsequent heats saw the times to beat continually dropping as Sammy’s 61 quickly fell to a 58 by newcomer Jonathan ‘Little Morris’ Chiang. On the girls’ side, another newcomer Sydney ‘Coach John already ate all the Girl Scout Cookies I sold him’ Stevens set a high standard with her mark of 68.27. The penultimate heats of both divisions saw extremely deep races. The 2020 girls Heat 2 would have been the Top Heat in almost every other season. Vibha Iyengar and Jackie Chang both went 67 to keep the ladies in the Top Heat honest and ensure a fast time would be necessary to claim the overall top spots. Senior Nitin Subramanian did the same on the boys side as his 57.14 PR would hold up for 6th overall when all was said and done.
Then it was onto the Top Heats where fireworks flew! The girls race was first and aside from the top two spots – which all 51 participants in the ‘guess the shootout’ game selected the twins – places 3-8 were up for grabs. And this much-hyped race did not disappoint! Both Bianca and Brooke fired out of the blocks and separated themselves from an exceptionally strong and deep field by the 150 mark. Brooke trailed into the homestretch and made one final attempt to overtake Bianca but came up just short – both sisters clocked 60 second efforts which saw them absolutely destroy the 5 year old meet record set by the great Kelly Bishop. Sylvana charged down the homestretch to reclaim her spot on the podium from 2019 and Freshman Agnes ‘Lil’ Kingsley’ Wang screamed out of Lane 8 to finished 4th, as Samantha Dunn and Triya Roy both clocked big PRs to round out the top six. What a race!!
On the boys’ side, the makings of another epic race were in place as the top runners from last season toed the line. Rocketing out to a fast start was last year’ champion Vishal Koppuru who, despite nursing a nagging hamstring issue, showed no signs of concern as he raced down the back stretch. Andrew, Alex, Pranav and Sahil all kept him honest through the second turn and once the stagger was cleared we knew a tight finish was in store. Vishal strode through the tape and took down Eliot Lubomirsky’s 2 year old meet record with Andrew taking a second off his PR to claim 2nd once again. Rounding out the podium was Sahil Goel who also logged a strong PR. Alex Richardson edged Pranav by a mere .03 for 4th and Sarang clocked a strong PR as well.
All in all, this coach counted 43 PRs for returning athletes – massive considering we are only in February! The boys start with an unofficial 4×4 clocking of 3:40 and the girls 4:12 if you add up the top 4 times – very impressive! Lots of time to shave off between now and May so let’s go to Linda Vista and start that process this afternoon!
Great job by all and a huge thanks for everyone who helped make this fun event happen!
Complete results are posted on-line. Future meet results will also be on athletic.net.
