TECH REMAINS UNDEFEATED WITH HARD FOUGHT VICTORY OVER WILLIAMS
January 20, 2007
On paper, the annual quadrangular meet versus Williams, RPI and Westfield State, that is actually a dual meet as far as the teams from MIT and Williams are concerned, was pretty even with Williams having a very slight edge. The actual meet was just about as close and every bit the battle these two teams have come to expect from each other. When all was said and done, MIT was able to secure the victory by a score of 225 1/2 to 208 to 107 1/2 for RPI and 51 for Westfield State.
The story of the meet was the quality of the Ephmen (11 individual event victories) going up against the depth and balance of the Engineers (scoring in every event with a total of 29 individuals contributing point scorers. The most dominant event for Williams was the 1000 meter race where the Ephs scored 26 points by virtue of placing 1-2-3-5, but MIT still managed 10 points with 4-6-7 placings. On the other hand, MIT was able to score 13 points in the 55 hurdles thanks to Anthony Teixeira and Omari Stephens placing second and third respectively and 18 1/2 in the pole vault with Stephens leading Greg Tao, Patrick Barragan and Nate Sharpe to 2-3-5-7 places while Williams was unable to score in either event.
The only event winners for MIT were James Oleinik in the shot put (47-11), William Fedus in the 400 (52.37) and the 4x400 run by Alex Rothberg, Matt Bieniosek, Aron Walker and Fedus (3:30.04). Nevertheless there was no lack of quality from the Engineers side of things. In the triple jump, MIT had five of the eight possible scorers led by Stephens, all qualifying for the New England Division III Championship in the process. Obinna Anyanwu also qualified for the championship despite not scoring with his ninth place finish.
Stephen Morton ran a season best of 6.66 in the 55 dash, took two long jumps (21-8 1/2), one triple jump (42-5 1/4) and placed second in the 200 to score a meet leading 23 points, all with a tight hamstring that limited his speed. Also in the long jump Teixeira and Chris Bateman qualified for the Division III championship.
In the 600, Bieniosek placed second with a championship qualifying time of 1:25.02. Yermie Cohen qualified in the 1000 with his 2:37.00 fourth place effort. Despite injurying his back at the start of the race, Jake Ruzevick ran a season best qualifying effort of 4:20.18 to place second in the mile. In the 5000, where one had to run under 15:57 to place, Chris Wong and Joe Roy-Mayhew led the Engineers with qualifying performances of 15:31.33 and 15:33.21, placing second and third respectively.
MIT took an early lead and kept it at 20-30 points the entire meet. The support for both teams was unbelievable with the noise so loud from the two teams making it impossible to hear the announcer or even the officials calling the competitors names.
Overall, MIT produced 31 season bests for a true team effort. At 5-0, the Techmen travel to Bowdoin College next Saturday to go up against very strong teams from Tufts and Springfield, along with solid teams from Bowdoin and Colby.