MIT EXCEEDS SEEDS TO PLACE THIRD IN NEW ENGLAND DIVISION III CHAMPIONSHIP
February 17, 2007
MIT's Men's Indoor Track and Field team entered the New England Division III Championship hosted by Bates College as the fourth seed behind Williams College, Tufts University and Springfield College with Bates close behind. Nine personal bests later the Engineers scored 12 more points than they were seeded for, easily finishing ahead of Springfield for third place with 79 points behind Williams with 152 and Tufts with 103, continuing to give MIT the most top three finishes in the meet's history.
Most of MIT's points were supposed to come at the end of the meet, but the long jumpers and pole vaulters did not feel like waiting to put MIT on the scoreboard. Seeded to only place fifth, Tech's jumpers stepped it up and finished 4-5-8 with captain Chris Bateman leading the way with a personal best of 21-8 3/4. Stephen Morton was right behind with 21-7 1/4 and Anthony Teixeira finishing up with 21-0 3/4.
Omari Stephens led the vault trio to outscore their seeds by one point. Stephens himself placed third with a 14-5 1/2, one place lower than his seed, but Greg Tao vaulted to a personal best of 14-2 3/4 to place fourth and Patrick Barragan tied for sixth with a vault of 12-11 3/4.
With 23 points after the two events MIT started the meet well. On the track, Teixeira and Stephens both made the finals in the 55HH and then proceeded to run personal bests in the finals to place 4th and 6th respectively. Teixeira ran 7.92 despite hitting the first three hurdles and Stephens ran 8.06.
In the shot put, James Oleinik was seeded second and despite throwing very near his best he had to settle for fifth with a toss of 48-10 3/4.
Entering the second half of the meet, MIT was in sixth place but confident their points would come. Matt Bieniosek took to the track in the 800 seeded 6th based on his 1:57.09 run at Boston University the week before. Running a very slow second 200, Bieniosek was forced to run everyone else's race. He could not respond at the end, finishing seventh in 1:58.83.
Jake Ruzevick was seeded fourth in the 1000 but exceeded that when he finished with a strong final 200 to run a personal best of 2:31.12 to place third.
Freshman Stephen Morton, having to deal with the very strange rulings of the games committee as well as an unfortunate random lane assignment, nevertheless stayed focused and finished second overall with a flat track personal best of 22.58. In the trials, Morton was only one of two runners out of 26 to get assigned lane two, the slowest of the five lanes used. Four of the six heats only had four to a heat, using the outside lanes for faster times. Clearly Morton was at a disadvantage with the inside lane, but instead of re-seeding to eliminate anyone from having to run in lane two, the games committee decided to run the 200 as is. In addition, they decided to advance everyone only on time rather than follow the NCAA rules of giving heat winners preference and a higher rank when assigning lanes for the final. This prevented one heat winner from even advancing and gave Morton lane three in the slower of the two section final. Morton took matters into his own hands, pushed the first turn to make up the stagger on lane four, and brought it home to win his section and beat everyone but the winner in the first section.
Joe Roy-Mayhew, seeded fifth in the 3000, struggled in the latter stages of the race and was unable to stay with the leaders. Fading to seventh in the final half mile, Roy-Mayhew ran 8:54.07.
The final field event, the triple jump was about to enter the final rounds with both Morton and Bateman making the finals. Despite a personal best of 43-11 1/4, Bateman was unable to move up past ninth position. Morton was in fifth coming out of the trials but fell to sixth in the final round. With his last jump, Morton jumped to a personal best of 45-10 1/2 to improve his freshman record and place third for a total day's work of 18 points.
With only the relays to go MIT only needed to score two points if Springfield won the 4x400 relay. MIT put that matter to rest when the DMR took to the track. Yermie Cohen did not run as well as he expected but he still put MIT in good position with a 3:13 1200 leg. Alex Rothberg brought the 400 leg in a fine 51.5 to put MIT in a close third. Archi Stuk ran an even paced 2:01.9 800 to put MIT even at the handoff. Hemagiri Arumugam followed the leaders for the first 800 meters, but when the pace slowed to 2:13 he took matters into his own hands and ran away with the race, finishing with a 4:25 and a four second lead over second place.
In the final event, the 4x800 relay, MIT led from wire to wire to win in 7:56.63. Bill Phipps took the lead and ran a 1:59.1 first leg. Ruzevick took the pace out hard, coming through the 400 in 56.5 to open up a 40 meter lead. Ruzevick finished in 1:57.5 to give Peter Mulligan a comfortable cushion. Nevertheless, Mulligan put any thoughts of their competitors catching up out of their minds by taking it out in 57.4. Mulligan finished in 2:01.6 to give anchor, Bieniosek, a thirty meter lead. A determined Bieniosek heard the crowd cheering for the closing Brandeis runner and ran a 56.9 opening 400. The Brandeis runners closed the gap down by at least 20 meters despite the fast pace. Bieniosek continued to push the pace coming through 600 in 1:26.8, which was too much for the Brandeis runners who eventually faded to finish six seconds behind the MIT championship team.
Next week, MIT goes back across the Charles River to compete at Boston University, host of the NEICAAA Championship. This meet is essentially the New England combined championship for divisions I, II and III.