Friday and Saturday gave us a very full 36 hours of track & field, with two events providing examples of why track is such a great sport!
Friday night’s Frosh-Soph Classic, under the lights at Los Gatos High School, is one of the really good meets of the year. This meet provides a chance for the younger athletes to shine at their own meet without the Varsity kids around. There were a lot of great races to watch! Monta Vista had a couple of highlights. Bhavana Pabbisetti improved her shot put PR by more than a foot on her last throw (following a tip from our high jump coach)! One interesting thing was that the shot sector was mis-marked…Bhavana’s first throw hit the 20′ line dead on, and when they measured the throw it was almost a foot longer…is there some psychological message here? Another highlight, and demonstration of great team spirit, was provided by Brent Mogensen. Brent ran a nice 3200m PR in 10:26, with each of the last three laps progressively faster–a very nice race. The FS boys 4×400 team was down one member because Rohan Choudhury had been spiked in the 800m, so Brent came back less than 10 minutes after his 3200m and anchored the 4×400 team! We told him he could jog it out, but as he looked at Roch and Chatty and Pranav pour their guts out on the track, he didn’t want to let them down…and Brent ended up running a strong mid-60s leg! Great team spirit shown by Brent, supporting his teammates! And that extra 400 may end up benefiting him during the finish of a 3200m race down the road.
Compete results are available here.
The Stanford Invitational is a beast of another stripe. Stanford is an example of one of my favorite things about track and field: We can compete on the same track as the best. High school basketball teams don’t show up at a basketball tournament and find out that Kobe has a team together and is playing at the same tournament. High school baseball teams don’t run into Buster Posey catching on the next field over. High school soccer teams don’t arrive at tournaments to see Mia Hamm or Ronaldo getting warm for their meets. H0wever…at the Stanford meet this weekend, Monta Vista lined up on the track while world record holder and Olympic gold medalist Ashton Eaton was jumping, Olympic medalist and American Record holder Shalane Flanagan was getting ready for her race, and when I hear a ‘hey coach!’ and turn around and it’s gold medalist Stephanie Brown Trafton taking her discus to be weighed!
Being elbow to elbow with elites is one of the great things of our sport, and the Stanford Invitational has it all, with high school, college and pros all competing side-by-side!
Monta Vista had boys and girls both competing in the 4×800 relays (Anand, John, Ajay, Bumpei, Sunny, Maddie, Chloe and Jenny) as well as Jenny in the 3000m individual race. We had a strong showing; it seemed like both Sunny and Maddie split under 3:30 in their 800s for the first time, which is a nice indicator for races to come!
Complete Stanford results are at this site.
There are photos available in the gallery. (sorry, it got too dark for the later races in Los Gatos!)
