TECH RUNS RECORD TO 8-1 WITH VICTORY OVER BOWDOIN, GORDON, SPRINGFIELD AND TUFTS
January 29, 2005
MIT took its lessons learned from last week's narrow loss to Williams and put them to use against rivals Tufts, Springfield at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. Seeded behind a good Tufts team, MIT runners and field athletes held their own in some of the team's weak events, competed well against Tufts in their strong middle distance and distance events and blew away the competition in the 55, 200, pole vault and weight throw. MIT won with a score of 184 to 163 for Tufts, 109 for Springfield, 96 for Bowdoin and 0 for Gordon College. The scoring format for five teams was used, which is 10-8-6-4-2-1.
Performing poorly in the jumps the week before, the Engineers found the mark and not only jumped to many season bests but outscored their opponents in the long jump, triple jump and pole vault with 39 points with the next closest being Tufts with 30. Makinde Adeagbo move up two places on his final attempt when he jumped 42-11 1/2 in the triple jump. Nestor Hernandez was not able to move up but certainly secured third place in the long jump when he jumped 21-11 1/2. Matt Clancy moved up to fourth on his final attempt by jumping 20-10. The real assist to MIT came from the vaulters, who scored 20 points by placing 1-3-4. Nate Ball led the way with a PR of 16-1 1/4 to qualify for the NCAA Championship and is currently ranked third in the country.
In the sprints, Zach Traina continued his dominance and came away with another double victory, winning both the 55 and 200. His only competition came from teammates David Blau and Jonathan Hsieh. Blau ran a season best 6.71 in the 55 and a flat track personal best of 23.25 in the 200 to earn second place in both. Hsieh, correcting a technique problem, improved tremendously, earning a third in the 55 with a 6.76 PR to give MIT a 1-2-3 sweep and running another PR of 23.68 to place fourth in the 200. Overall, MIT scored 46 points in the two events, which was 30 points more than Springfield and 46 more than the other three teams.
In the weight throw, Uzoma Orji set a season best of 59-00 3/4 to easily win the event and move up to third in the country for Division III. David Saylor, finding it difficult to live up to the expectations he set when he threw 57-8, pulled out the second place on his final throw. This gave MIT 18 points in the event and with Bowdoin picking up third, fourth and sixth that left Tufts with only two points.
MIT certainly had its weak events. In the 400 and 600, traditionally strong events for MIT, the Engineers only managed two points to 34 for Tufts, 15 for Bowdoin and 11 for Springfield. The high jump, Tech's weakest event this year, MIT could not manage any points. Sprinfield took the first three places to keep Tufts from gaining many points.
In the middle distance and distance events, the 800, 1000, mile, 3000 and 5000, MIT held their own with 43 points to Tufts' 57, Bowdoin's 44 and Springfield's 11. Minus Carlos Renjifo with a lower back injury, John Brewer with a stress fracture and Chris Bruce with a calf injury, MIT was forced to double its three top runners, Ben Schmeckpeper, Fivos Constantinou and Eric Khatchadourian. Schmeckpeper placed second in the mile with a 4:20 and a third in the 3000 with a 8:33.48 performance. Constantinou placed third in the mile with a 4:22 and second in the 1000 with a PR of 2:34.65. Khatchadourian placed thrid in the 800 with a personal best of 1:59.89 and came back in the 3000 to earn fifth.
MIT finished the Division III part of the regular season with an 8-1 record. Next week, MIT travels to BU to face the Terriers as well as Boston College, Harvard, Northeastern, Providence and Rutgers. It should be interesting to see how the Division III Engineers fare against the Division I teams.