MIT SETS PERSONAL BESTS ON TRACK AT VALENTINES MEET
February 9, 2008
MIT had a very good day on the track at the Boston University Valentine's Invitational this weekend. The meet had over 2700 entries with the women competing on Friday and the men on Saturday. The tradeoff for superb competition was an unbelievably long day at the track (11 1/2 hours) on Saturday. Most of MIT's field event athletes did not compete, instead using the day for a hard practice back at MIT. However, Patrick Barragan took advantage of the outstanding competition by setting a personal best of 13-7 1/4 in the pole vault.
On the track, Stephen Oney set yet another personal best in the 400 by running a very well paced race to finish with a time of 50.82. In the 800, John Granata ran a very competitive race but making a technical error in the final 100 meters. Nevertheless, he ran a best of 1:55.16 for the top MIT time this season and puttting him number seven all-time for MIT. Following him in the next section, Matt Bieniosek ran 1:56.48 for a season best eventhough he fatigued in the final 200, possibly trying to get the win a little too early. Shawn Conrad ran a strong race in his section of the 800 to set a season best of 2:01.42.
Yermie Cohen was the MIT performer of the meet, running a personal best in the mile with a 4:15.82 even though he made a few technical mistakes in the race. Cohen's time placed him in the top 10 all-time for MIT. Determined to do even better, he came back in the 1000 and dropped a very nice victory in 2:31.00 to move to number nine on the all-time MIT list in that event. Also running personal bests in the mile run were Paul Welle (4:21.23) and Chris Wong (4:24.40). Peter Mulligan ran a personal best in the 1000 with an outstanding race in 2:38.48. Even though he did not win, Kevin Kleinguetl won his section of the 1000 in 2:34.75.
In the 3000, Gihan Amarasiriwardena showed he is back for good as he ran a great race for the second week in succession. His time of 8:49.34 led him to victory and was a great personal best. Running a season best and a great race was Rocco Repetski with a time of 9:13.82.
In the 5000, Joe Roy-Mayhew took the race out in a pace needed to qualify for nationals but got no support. His mile splits were 4:43, 9:29 and 14:13. His overall time of 14:55.36 was a personal best and an outstanding effort but not good enough to qualify for nationals, missing provisional qualifying by .36 seconds. Trevor Rundell ran a season best of 15:34.50.
The only relay Tech ran was the 4x400 relay. The handoffs were nothing to brag about and particularly disturbing given how well they had gone the two previous weeks, but the running made up for it. Oney ran a fine leadoff of 51.1 despite slowing down with 15 meters to go to try to better lineup with Bieniosek who in turn ran 50.6. Dave Reshef ran an excellent 51.1 to give the baton to Granata. Running an outstanding leg, he finished in 49.5 to give MIT a season best of 3:22.46.
Next week, MIT hosts the annual Coed Invite on Saturday starting at noon. This will be the final tuneup for the New England Division III Championship.