After earning both first- and second-place finishes in their first two meets of the outdoor season, the men's track and field team continued its push toward the all-important NESCAC Championship meet by posting a slew of impressive performances this past weekend at the Bernard Solomon Invitational at Northeastern.
While the meet was not scored team-by-team, the Jumbos displayed solid efforts across the board, taking advantage of the intense competition provided by the participating Div. I and Div. II teams.
"It was a good day overall," senior quad-captain Dave Sorensen said. "We had some pretty good performances and some people didn't have their best day. The biggest surprise was the weather. We were expecting 50 degrees and rain, and it ended up being 70 degrees and sunny. We ended up having some better performances because of the weather."
Sophomore Billy Hale shared similar sentiments.
"I think we had a pretty strong performance as a team," Hale said. "There wasn't a whole lot of competition from some of the other teams, so as a whole I feel our team dominated the meet and it was more everyone trying to compete among themselves."
The Jumbos were led by five first-place performances, one courtesy of senior quad-captain Dan Marcy, who won the triple jump with a distance of 14.08 meters. The senior appears to have picked up where he left off after the indoor season, when he finished as the runner-up in the triple jump at the NCAA Championships. His jump Saturday was two inches better than his performance last weekend and well above the NCAA qualifying standards.
Junior Phil Rotella took home the top spot in the 200-meter dash (22.32 seconds) and was second in the 100 meters with a time of 11.19 seconds. Sophomore Trevor Donadt was another first-place finisher, winning the 400-meter hurdles in 54.8 seconds and taking the runner-up spot in the 110-meter hurdles in 15.13 seconds.
Sophomore Scott Brinkman gave Tufts another win, this time in the 800 meters, as he finished a few hundredths of a second ahead of classmate Hale. The Jumbos were also boosted by second-place finishes from sophomore Andrew Longley in the 400-meter hurdles (56.15 seconds), Sorensen in the 1,500 meters (4:02.79), senior Chris Kantos in the 5k (15:23.17), and senior quad-captain Jeremy Arak in high jump (6 feet, 4 inches).
Hale, competing in the 800-meter dash, was satisfied with his own personal performance, his best time of the season, but still a few seconds short of his personal record.
"I was happy with it," he said. "I thought it was a great indication of where I'm at right now. I'm hoping it will qualify me for the fast heat for the NESCAC meet in two weeks, and that's the meet we are shooting for."
Sorensen also said he was happy with his own personal performance, though he conceded there is still room for improvement.
"I would have liked to be under four minutes, but I care more about the steeplechase during outdoors," he said. "Coming in second was fine. But I still would like to see some improvement by the end of the season."
While the Jumbos start preparation for the NESCAC Championships which kick off the postseason, many of coach Ethan Barron's athletes felt that while the meet is still two weeks away, the team is getting very close to hitting its top form.
"The team is definitely on track for NESCACs," Sorensen said. "Pretty much everyone across the board is getting better in their respective events. And when NESCACs comes around in two weeks, I think the team will definitely be ready to continue the improvement streak and just give a really good overall team performance."
One athlete who seems increasingly prepared every week is sophomore Nick Welch, who for the second time in three meets this season won the 3,000-meter steeplechase event in 9:41.57.
"I felt better about the way it went Saturday," Welch said. "I was hoping I could run around 9:40, so the time was in that range, but I still feel like I could go a lot faster ... I'm hoping to keep dropping times both as I get into more competitive races with stronger people that will pull me along, as well as still working on technique."
While the Jumbos will now look ahead to next weekend's pair of meets, the MIT Invitational and the Larry Ellis Invitational at Princeton, it is worth noting that the Jumbos have competed against any of their NESCAC rivals only once since the indoor season, at the Snowflake Classic on March 29.
"It always helps to race against NESCAC teams because you will see them later in the season," Sorensen said. "But at the Northeastern meet, we had Div. I and Div. II teams, and as long as there is competition to race against, it doesn't matter if the faces change later in the season because we are used to racing against others."
