The men's track and field team did all it could, but came up just short of a NESCAC Championship Saturday, coming in second at the event held at Hamilton College.
Williams came in first with 195 points, while Tufts finished just behind with 183. The next closest competitor, Bates, scored only 84.5 points in the 11-team contest.
"If you look up and down at the results, there weren't many places where people could have done much better," senior quad-captain Dan Marcy said. "Overall the team did about as well as it could have and it was unfortunate that we had as many injuries as we did."
The Jumbos were at a disadvantage from the get-go, having lost senior quad-captain Nate Scott, one of their strongest competitors, to an injury. While the absence of Scott may have been disheartening, Tufts did not let it hamper its efforts.
"The mindset didn't change [without Nate]," Marcy said. "With him there we're going to try our best, and with him not there we're going to try our best. We just went out for the win. It didn't happen but we were pretty close."
With Scott out, other Jumbos, including sophomore Ikenna Acholonu, stepped up in the fight against Williams. Acholonu won the 110-meter hurdles with a time of 14.95 seconds, precisely meeting the NCAA provisional qualifying mark.
The 110-meter hurdles marked one of Tufts' better performances, as the team scored points for second- and third-place finishes by sophomore Trevor Donadt and sophomore Jared Engelking, respectively. Donadt continued his success with a win in the 400-meter hurdles.
Tufts' distance runners also did their part to pick up the slack and rack up points for the team. Senior quad-captain Dave Sorensen, who had already set a NCAA provisional mark in the 3,000-meter steeplechase this season, did so again with a time of 9:10.73. The finish marked a four-second improvement from his last provisional mark and was good for first place in the event.
In the 5,000-meter run, sophomore Jesse Faller placed first with a time of 15:10.22, about five seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
"I was confident before the race that I would win and I felt very in-control for most of the race," Faller said. "I pretty much just stayed right behind the leaders up until the last three laps and then [passed] them at the end. I was happy to live up to expectations."
Other notable performances for the distance crew included sophomore Nick Welch and senior Chris Kantos. Both scored for Tufts with fifth-place finishes, Kantos in the 10,000-meter run and Welch in the 5,000-meter run. Welch also picked up a couple of points in the 3,000-meter steeplechase by coming in seventh.
"The goal going in was to score as many points as possible knowing that the meet was likely going to be very close," Welch said. "The steeplechase didn't go as well as I had hoped, and I actually got tripped up and went down about 800 meters in. It wasn't quite the race I was expecting, but if anything that was just motivation to get it done in the 5K a couple hours later.
"It was the first time I'd tried any sort of double [race] like that, especially in a championship meet, but I'm glad that I did and I'm glad I could score in both," he continued. "We still ended up a little bit short in the end but the goal was to keep it close. When you look at the results you can see both Tufts and Williams had a lot of guys entered in multiple events, which I think just goes to show how much both programs are willing to lay out for these meets and how much it means to each of them. It's the sort of thing that physically is tough but is made a whole lot easier by having your teammates there and having a common goal that's driving you at the end of a long day."
Another victory for the Jumbos on the day came in the high jump. Junior James Bradley, who qualified for nationals during the indoor season, won the event with a 6'5'' jump. Senior quad-captain Jeremy Arak came in third, while junior Ted McMahan and sophomore Isaiah Paramore also scored with fifth- and eighth-place finishes, respectively. Marcy earned points in the other jumping events, as he placed second in the triple jump and fourth in the long jump.
"In the long jump I was pretty happy," Marcy said. "I did about as well as I could have. The people ahead of me jump a lot farther than I've ever jumped. In the triple jump, I missed out on first by just a centimeter. I was pretty disappointed."
The Jumbos also performed well in the relay events, finishing second in both the 4x100-meter relay and the distance medley relay. Sophomores Marc Soskin and Andrew Longley, along with juniors Phil Rotella and Colin Fitzgerald, timed in at 42.63 seconds in the 4x100, while Faller, Sorensen, sophomore Billy Hale and junior Marvin Walker recorded a time of 10:16.27 in the DMR. Tufts scored in the 4x400-meter relay as well, taking third in the event.
Tufts now looks ahead to New England Div. III Championships in New London, Conn. next weekend.
"From this point, the team focus really changes," Marcy said. "For the most part it's more individual. It's not really easy for us to lay out hard as a team because a lot of people are studying for finals. Typically we don't run our distance guys as hard either since we usually tire them out at NESCACs. We'll probably send a smaller team this weekend and try to improve our individual performances."
