Facing its first tough competition of the season, the men's track team held its own this past weekend in the Polar Bear Invite at Bowdoin. The Jumbos scored 174 points, good enough for third place, behind Springfield College (231) and Bowdoin (185.5). With a good overall performance, the Jumbos left the meet in fairly high spirits.
"We ran pretty well," coach Connie Putnam said. "They just had the edge in a couple of events and it really showed through."
The biggest weakness for Tufts in the competition was on the sprinting squad. With only one sprinting race victory, the Jumbos were unable to score many points in this area of the meet. Putnam mentioned that both Bowdoin and Springfield had better sprinting team structures than the Jumbos, and felt that this edge cost Tufts valuable points in those events.
"The sprinting is really where we fell down," Putnam said. "We gave up almost all of our points there, and in a close meet you can't afford to do that."
Putnam hopes that the performance of the sprinting squad will improve over the next few meets. His attention next weekend will be focused on the 200-meter dash and the 1,600 relay team, two areas where he hoped his team would have performed better. Junior Adam Barrer was the Jumbos' best runner in the 200 (23.76), taking sixth place while the 1600 relay team came in third, with a time of 3:28.65.
"The four by four (1,600 relay) is still off from where we want it to be, but it was also six seconds faster than last weekend, so it's a step in the right direction," co-captain senior Darren Fabbri said.
While the sprinters did not help their team out much with their performances, Putnam was still pleased with their efforts and saw improvement in many of his member's seasonal times.
"We took good steps towards development even though we didn't win," the coach said.
Putnam felt that the 400, 600, and 800 events all represented good races for his men. While sophomore Greg Devine was the only victor in the 400 (51.26), both senior David Patterson and sophomore Bryant Coen had good races in the 600 and 800, taking third and second place, respectively, with times of 1:26.43 and 2:00.13.
In other running events, the hurdlers and long-distance runners for the team had very solid showings, with several runners setting personal best records. In the hurdling events, sophomore Bryan Pitko took third place in the 55-meter high hurdles (7.97) in his first race of the season, right behind teammate Devine, who finished second (7.92).
The long distance events featured career best times within the 1,600-meter race for senior J.R Cruz (4:28.45) and junior Justin Lewis (4:37.38). The Jumbos secured a victory in the 1,000-meter run as well with Patterson's 2:35.64 finish.
Once again, the lack of a high jumper hurt the team in scoring as well. While freshmen Patrick Taylor has shown marked improvement in learning the high jump, he has been unable to improve quickly enough to fill the team's deficit to this point.
"We just don't have a high jumper," Putman said. "We need a guy who can jump 6'3" to 6'6". Patrick will come along eventually, but in the meantime we're unable to score in that area."
While lacking a high jumper, the rest of the jumping squad, the pole vaulters, and the throwing squad all showed progress at the meet.
"We didn't expect to win," Fabbri said. "We just went in there to run up against some good competition and have good races."
The goal for Putnam was to have his team continue in its improvements and steadily develop so that its best performance can come during New England Division IIIs.
This weekend the Jumbos will face Springfield again in a home meet that will also feature rival MIT, among others. The meet will kick off at the Gancher Center at 12 p.m.
