Men's Track and Field | Junior Engelking wins Tufts Pentathlon

    For junior Jared Engelking, Friday evening's pentathlon was a game of precision.
    With a score of 3,400 points, Engelking hit the exact mark necessary to qualify for the NCAA Championships — a personal best for the junior, who outscored WPI senior Joe Krasinskas by 177 for the top spot.
    "I think there were a couple of events that I could have done better in, but all in all, I qualified for Nationals, so I was pleased," Engelking said.
    "I wasn't really looking at it as in terms of trying to win the meet — I was just trying to go for points," he continued. "The competition was pretty good; I was pushing myself the entire time. The hurdles were the only event that I actually won, so it was good competition."
    Tufts' other two competitors posted impressive results during the pentathlon at the Gantcher Center as Junior Trevor Donadt claimed fourth place with 3,115 points — just five points out of third — followed by senior quad-captain Skip Pagel, who finished fifth with a score of 3,059. The Pentathlon featured athletes from Tufts, WPI, Bates, Colby, Williams, MIT and Fitchburg.
    Notching more than 2,900 points apiece, all three Jumbos qualified for Div. III New Englands.
    "[Donadt and Pagel] both achieved their goals of qualifying for New Englands, so based on that, they did pretty well," Engelking said. "I know both of them are capable of performing better than that, but both of them achieved their goal."
    Engelking's best performance came in the 55-meter hurdles, which he won with a time of 7.94 seconds, earning himself 865 points — the highest point total any athlete received in a single event Friday.
    Despite earning his lowest point values in the jumps, Engelking placed second in the long jump with 6.05 meters while tying for third in the high jump with 1.77 meters.
    "I definitely still need to work on my high jump and long jump," Engelking said.
    Donadt's best performance was his third-place finish in the 55-meter hurdles with a time of 8.02 seconds. Pagel also claimed two third-place finishes, recording a jump of 5.98 meters in the long jump and a throw of 11 meters in the shot put.
    The athletes will compete in the pentathlon again at Div. III New Englands Feb. 20-21.
    "[At New Englands], I would like to try to improve on the 3,400 to get a higher score to guarantee myself at spot at Nationals," Engelking said.