The men's track and field team opened its season with a strong performance at the Jay Carisella Invitational hosted by Northeastern on Saturday.
In the first meet since last May, this young squad used the event as a starting point, gauging its training as it prepares for the bulk of its season, which starts in January.
"I'd say it was pretty positive," senior co-captain Sam Read said. "It was the first meet of the [season], so no one was really looking to have the best performance of their life, but it was definitely good to get everyone to get out there and compete again and to see the training we've been doing pay off."
Though the meet was not scored, several individuals posted strong marks to start their season. The highest finisher for the Jumbos was Read, who took third place among 26 competitors in the pole vault, clearing a height of 14'11," improving on his previous best mark of 14'6".
"I was pretty pleased," Read said. "I PR'ed, and it's been a little too long since my last one, so it was nice to get that out of the way, and it was definitely a good way to start off the season."
Other top-10 finishers were sophomores Gbola Ajayi, who took eighth among 20 athletes in the triple jump with a length of 44'1.25", and Thiago Lima, who took in the 1000 meters among 23 in a time of 2:42.
"Even people who didn't have their best days still had better days than where they were last year at this time," Read said. "But we had some guys PR and other guys come close to their PRs and anytime you can do that in the first meet it's pretty solid."
Many members of the squad were still gearing up for the season and did not compete on Saturday. This included many distance runners who recently came off of their cross country seasons. There was, however, a trio of strong performers from the distance squad — senior Chris Brunnquell, freshman Bobby McShane and sophomore Sam Haney.
In the first event of the day, Brunnquell took 11th in the 5,000-meter run among 65 athletes. Despite coming off of an injury that stunted his cross country season, Brunnquell's time of 15:21 was a personal best of 10 seconds and an ECAC qualifier.
"I realized the week of Regionals that I was in really good shape, so I decided to extend my season by a few weeks to try qualify for ECACs," Brunnquell said. "I was cruising for about two miles or so, but then started feeling really bad around 4000 meters and started looking at the clock every lap and doubting myself. Then with 200 meters to go, I realized that I had to run about 32 seconds to qualify for ECACs, so I closed harder than is actually possible for me to do, which was around 30 seconds flat."
McShane also produced an 11th place finish in the mile, finishing in 4:28 among 60 athletes. In the 3,000-meter run, Haney took 12th in a time of 8:54 to finish in the top third among 39 athletes.
Several personal bests were also reached by the throwers this weekend.
"The throwers all did well," Read said. "[Junior] Adam Aronson had two PR's, and [sophomore] Curtis Yancy had his second best throw. It was also good to see the freshmen get out there and throw."
The Jumbos' next competition will be the Dartmouth Relays on Jan. 7 and 9, before they host the Tufts Invitational I on the 15th.
The squad is optimistic about its ability to make steps forward before it hits the track again a month from now.
"The whole fall … has been about getting into shape, so we haven't done a lot of top-end speed stuff and a lot of our guys are just coming off of cross country, so now its all about building off of the base that we built up," Read said. "We've got a lot of raw strength right now, but we've got to start moving it towards specific speed."
"The sprinters, jumpers, and throwers will get some more serious workouts in as we get deeper into the season, and the distance guys are already getting in a solid base that should make us really strong in February," Brunnquell added.
