Men's track shakes off winter rust with Second-place finish

The men's indoor track team shook off winter rust and home-cooked meals to open second semester with a second-place finish at the Brandeis Invitational meet on Saturday. The result was the best finish for the Jumbos this season, following non-scoring events in December in the Northeastern Husky Carnival and Tufts Holiday Classic.

The Jumbos finished with 131 points, well ahead of third-place NYU's 72. MIT raced home with 199 points to top the placings.

"We really weren't trying to compete," Coach Connie Putnam said. "Strange as that may sound, we were just trying to get people's legs back under them."

The sprint squad did not reach the final of the 55m dash and did not place in the top six in the 200m run. However, it featured only half of its runners due to a combination of injury and fatigue from the first week back at training.

Several runners put in strong, promising performances, including freshmen Trevor Williams and Will Heitmann. The pair finished seventh and eleventh respectively in the 200. Heitmann also jumped 3.60 meters in the pole vault, tying for third overall. Senior tri-captain Greg Devine led the charge in the 400m with a time of 51.24 seconds, finishing ahead of MIT and Connecticut College sprinters, while senior Bryant Coen won the 600m run (1:26.36).

"We used the sprinters sparingly," Putnam said. "The runners really were just shaking off rust."

The Jumbos dominated the distance events, with senior tri-captain Adam Sharp squeezing past host Brandeis' Ryan Parker by 0.11 seconds to finish first in the 1000m. Fellow senior Jake Berman placed fourth in the 1500m (4:11.83). The Jumbos nearly made it a one-two-three-four finish in the 3000m. All-American sophomore Nate Brigham continued his recent cross-country success, finishing first ahead of teammates sophomore Michael Don (third), and juniors Jon Rosen (fourth), and Peter Bromka (fifth).

Putnam was delighted with the results of the distance team, one of his primary concerns prior to the 2002-03 indoor season, although he cautioned against misinterpreting the results, saying that he normally would have distributed the distance runners throughout all of the distance events.

"They ran like madmen," Putnam said. "Ideally I would have split [the four 3000 meter runners] up, but they wanted to run together."

Sophomore Nate Thompson claimed a pair of victories in the 55m hurdles and the long jump, while freshman David Clayton tacked on a second-place finish in the triple jump, leaping to 12.13 meters. While the 4x400m and 4x800m relay teams did not fare so well, the Distance Medley team, highly touted by Putnam at the beginning of the season, finished first with a time of 10:36:64. The DMR squad beat NYU by just over a second, and eleven seconds clear of third-place Brandeis.

The throwers also fared well with four top eight finishes, led by junior Ryan McPherson who placed third in the shot put with a put of 12.49 meters. Teammates senior Adam Lukowski, freshman Jason Galvin and sophomore Dan March finished fifth, seventh and eighth respectively. The foursome was equally strong in the weight throw, as Lukowski finished third ahead of March (fourth), Galvin (sixth), and McPherson (seventh).

"The throwers had a pretty good day," Putnam said. "I think they would have liked to do better, but they still were very strong."

With the team re-matching against Saturday's winner MIT in a couple weeks, Putnam used this meet to both gauge the opposition and provide the team with further experience. He stressed that the team was more concerned with getting back into the groove of regular competition and exercise than it was with the results at Brandeis.

"We've got the ability to match MIT for points," Putnam said. "There were a lot of things we didn't do [out of choice on Saturday]."

The men's indoor track team compete this Saturday, January 18, in the Tufts Invitational Meet at the Gantcher Center at 11am.