The men's track and field season culminates on Saturday when the team travels to Hamilton College to participate in the NESCAC Championships. After tying for first with Williams in the NESCACs last year, and taking first in the New England Championships during the indoor season, the team seems ready to take its first NESCAC title since 1991.
"The goal is to win a NESCAC Championship," sophomore Andrew Longley said. "We haven't won outright in a long time. Really, our only purpose in going is to beat Williams as a team and win NESCACs. Everyone lays out in this meet and runs in way too many events - more than they probably should - and everybody scrounges for every point. One thing you learn from last year is every single point counts, and it rarely happens, but you can tie. Everyone's just going to try to get every point they can."
The task will be harder than expected, however, as senior quad-captain Nate Scott, one of the team's biggest point scorers, injured his hamstring on Wednesday and will be unable to participate in the event.
"I can't even put [the disappointment] into words," Scott said. "It's probably the worst thing that could've happened to me senior year."
Nevertheless, the Jumbos will do their best to compete without Scott, who contributed to the team's New England Championship victory earlier this year with a win in the pentathlon.
"We have a lot of studs on our team, a lot who step it up when things start to not look so good," Scott said. "I think we still have a chance. People will have to step up. Williams won't lie down; we'll have to take it from them. But we have guys who have the potential to do that."
"Nate going down hurts," senior quad-captain Dan Marcy added. "I was disappointed to see that he tweaked his hamstring but that's just the way team sports go. Someone falters and someone else will pick up the slack. The meet never goes exactly how everyone plans; one person can have a bad performance and someone else will step it up and pick them up. He'll still be there and be loud for us."
The Jumbos will have to look to Marcy, who finished second in the triple jump at the NCAA Div. III Indoor Championships, and senior quad-captain Dave Sorensen, who also qualified for indoor Nationals. Marcy set an NCAA provisional mark at the Stonehill Skyhawk Invitational on April 5 and then proceeded to improve upon that mark in each of the next two weeks. Sorensen, meanwhile, has posted NCAA provisional marks in both the 3,000-meter steeplechase and the 5,000-meter run.
The duo will be instrumental to Tufts' success this weekend.
"Hopefully I can pull out a win in the triple jump," Marcy said. "I'm also long jumping, which is sort of rare for me, but I'm hoping to score the team some extra points. If I get a place in that, it would be an added bonus."
Still, even with the efforts of Marcy and Sorensen, the team will need a quality all-around performance from all of its competitors if they hope to be triumphant on Saturday. Williams has won 15 out of the last 17 outdoor New England Championships, in addition to 16 of the past 18 NESCAC titles (including the tie with Tufts). Before the tie, Williams had taken the last six NESCAC championships outright.
"Williams has been a powerhouse in the NESCAC since long before my time," Longley said. "As far as I know, since the early nineties they've been the only team competing for championships every year. Lately it's just been Tufts and Williams, heavily dominated by Williams. But last year seemed to be sort of a turning point, and it's leaning a bit towards Tufts now and we want to keep it that way."
"We're going to go out on Saturday and do what we've been doing all season and compete," Marcy added, "and at the end of the day one of us will be the NESCAC champion. They're a good team, we know they're ready, but we're also ready. Hopefully it turns out in our favor."
