The men’s track and field team entered the New York State Collegiate Track Conference Indoor Championships at the Rochester Institute of Technology hoping to return home with a victory.
Although they fell short of their goal, the men performed well, finishing second overall behind Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
“We’re happy to be much higher than we were last year, but we’re not satisfied,”Head Coach John Izzo said. “We had our chance to win and we let a few things slip away. Everybody tried hard and most of the team performed wonderfully, but you had to have everything go almost perfectly in order to do it, and RPI had one of those meets.”
The men started the meet with seven points on the board already, which freshman Tim Horan and junior Andrew Lange earned from their performance at last week’s Pentathlon Championship.
They quickly added to their total in the 35-pound weight throw, which graduate student Andrew Wunder won with a mark of 17.73 meters. The hot trend continued in the distance medley relay.
The team of junior Chris Nolan, sophomore Brian MacIlvain and seniors Matt Rodems and Dan Duett ran 10:23.58 to finish in first place. They are currently ranked 13th nationally.
Freshman Mark Stevens added to the point total with a fourth place finish in the 5,000-meter run, which he ran in 15:13.40.
In the 800-meter relay, the men took home another first place finish with a time of 1:31.90, just two-hundredths of a second ahead of the second place RPI team.
The points continued to add up on Saturday morning, with Stevens finishing seventh in the 1,500-meter run with a time of 4:09.18.
In the 400-meter dash, juniors Matt Tierney and Kirk Bristol finished first and third with 49.56 seconds, and 51.64 seconds respectively.
With a time of 67.97 seconds, MacIlvain placed sixth in the 500-meter dash. In the 55-meter dash, freshman Max Ehrmann ran 6.75 seconds to finish sixth.
Junior Chris Clark completed the 800-meter run in 1:55.44, finishing second.
Tierney and Bristol added to the scoring again, this time in the 200-meter dash. Tierney ran 22.55 seconds to finish second, and Bristol was fifth with a time of 23.09 seconds. In the 3,000-meter run, Duett ran 8:55.90, securing fifth.
In the 3,200-meter relay, the men battled with RIT through the early stages of the race.
On the last lap of the third leg, Rodems took first place and the team never looked back. The team of MacIlvain, Stevens, Rodems and Nolan won with a time of 7:55.81.
In the 1,600-meter relay, the final event of the meet, Bristol, sophomore Jacob Pylman, Clark and Tierney combined to finish first with a time of 3:22.34, giving the team a clean sweep in the relay events.
“To win all four relays was special,” Izzo said. “It’s never been done before in the history of the state meet.”
This weekend the team travels to St. Lawrence University, where they will compete in Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships.
“This weekend is totally dedicated to try to get people to Nationals,” Izzo said. “We’ll also have a number of people with a good shot to score.”
Swidler can be reached at dswidler@campustimes.org.
