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Jacqui Wentz Leads Engineers at Boston University Terrier Invitational January 23-24, 2009 On day one of the competition at the Boston University Terrier Invitational, the MIT Women's Track and Field team, had two freshman records and two varsity records. The most impressive of those came at the end of the day when Jacqui Wentz '10, toured the 200 meter, banked track, 25 times to smash the varsity record in the 5000 and became the first woman in the country to make the NCAA Division III Indoor Championship automatic standard by racing to a varsity record of 17:05.20. Coming through 1600 splits of 5:19, 5:31 and 5:35, Wentz held on despite the fatigue at the end. Earlier in the meet, many women produced personal bests. In the pole vault, Hazel Briner '11, cleared 10' for the first time. Emily Hwang '09, and Karin Fisher '11, both cleared 10-6. On the track, Portia Jones smashed the 200 freshman and varsity record when she raced to a 26.28 performance. Another freshman, Martha Gross, bettered the freshman record in the 400 with a 61.65 effort. In the 800, Andrea Bradshaw '09, ran a season best of 2:17.77, but never really raced to her potential as she went right to the back of the pack. Katherine Eve '12, ran a personal best in the mile with a 5:14.26, moving her to number four on the all time MIT list. Just before the distance events, the 4x400 team took to the track. The quartet of Gross, Jones, Briner and Bradshaw ran a season best 4:03.11 to record the second fastest time in MIT indoor history. Gross led off with a 61.8, followed by Jones in 58.1, Briner in 63.0 and Bradshaw in 60.1. In the 3000, Elizabeth Finn '09, showed signs of her old self when she finished well in a time of 10:37.83. Tania Morimoto '12, also in the 3000, ran a best of 10:48.08. In the 5000, in addition to Wentz, Maggie Lloyd '12 raced to a big personal best of 18:43.68, running around 2:00 faster than she did last year in high school. On Saturday, the quartet of Bradshaw, Jones, Gross and Wentz again took to the track, this time in the distance medley relay. In an effort to qualify for nationals the team wanted to run in the 12:05 range. Bradshaw opened up in the 1200, an event she had never raced in before. She went with the pack at the start of the race, coming through the 400 in 69 but then quickly stopped racing, finishing the leg in 3:48.8. Jones took the baton and ran a 58.8 leg by herself. Gross, running the 800 for the first time at MIT and third time in her life, went out too fast, running 31 for the first 200 and struggled home in 2:29.6. Although Wentz was by herself she nevertheless pressed the pace and ran 5:04.2 for her best ever 1600. Unfortunately the time of 12:21.43 did not come close to qualifying nationally. On the men's side, there were also some highlights. Perhaps the best event for the Engineers was the pole vault. Both Nate Sharpe '09 and Travis Hery '11 both vaulted to personal bests with marks of 14-3 1/4 and 13-9 1/4 respectively. Greg Tao '10, also cleared 14-3 1/4. Stephen Morton had average performances by his standards. In the jumps, Morton never quite got accustomed to the extremely bouncy elevated runway and fouled more than usual. His long jump at 22-2 1/4 and triple jump at 47-2 1/2 were an example of an average day. His sprint results were also ordinary. In the dash the soft infield produced a 55 sprint time of 6.62 and on the banked oval he ran 22.70 due to the fact that he was not very aggressive. Both Tony McDonald '10, and Adam Mustafa '11, threw personal bests in the 35 lb. weight throw. McDonald threw 49-4 1/4 and Mustafa threw 47-2 1/2. Back on the track, Nick Leonard '11, and Kahlil Dozier '12, ran personal bests in the 400. Leonard dropped over two seconds off his indoor best, running 51.02. Dozier continued his weekly improvement by running 53.21 in the two lapper. In the 800, Dave Reshef 'G, and Logan Daum '11, ran indoor bests of 1:59.68 and 2:04.06 respectively. Right after them, the 1000 was run and the trio of Yermie Cohen '09, Matt Bieniosek '09, and Bill Phipps '10, all ran season or personal bests. Cohen won the section in 2:31.11 while Bieniosek was close behind in 2:31.92. Phipps, after leading the first 400, fell back to 2:33.18. In the distance events, four runners ran personal bests. The 3000 was first with Hemagiri Arumugam '10, and Paul Welle '11, representing MIT. Both ran consistent 69-70 second 400s until unleashing vicious final 200s of 30 and 32 respectively to finish in 8:37.41 and 8:39.10. Dan Harper '12, ran an excellent race in the 5000 where he fell off the back end of the race, still ran 75s and finished with a 31 to run 15:16.87. Gihan Amarasiriwardena '10, was moved up at the last minute to the fast section, which was probably a little too fast, and did not get to finish his warmup. Nevertheless, he ran an inspired 4:38 first mile, held onto a 5:00 second mile and then fell apart with a 5:12 final mile en route to a best of 15:27.77. Next week, MIT travels to Bowdoin College in Maine to compete against Bowdoin, Colby, Springfield and Tufts in a 5-way meet.
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