Men's and Women's Teams "Compete" Their Way to 2-0 Records

January 12, 2018

Entering their first intercollegiate meet of the season, a tri-meet with Bates College and Colby College, the Women's Indoor Track & Field team was relatively healthy (missing six key student-athletes) and favored to win.  The Men's team was down nine key contributors and two more were limited in their return to competition.  In addition, with the scoring system preferred by the NCAA, MIT's strength and depth in many events would not count, as only two individuals from each team could score per event.  Based on the seeds going into the meet, the men were underdogs to Bates College.

The emphasis for Tech was to focus on competing, not how fast, how far or how high one performed.  Beat their opponents in the majority of opportunities and MIT would have a chance to win both meets. 

In the first round of field events MIT showed their domination. Yorai Shaoul '21 got things started in the Long Jump with a jump of 22-7, even though his full approach was somewhat limited by the Shot Put barriers.  Unfortunately due to three of the injuries, only one of which was sport related, MIT only had one jumper, thus giving up certain points. 

In the aforementioned Shot Put, Freshman Will Woltmann and Jon Fakkema '19 did battle, pushing each other to personal bests and to finish 1-2 for the Engineers.  Woltmann took the lead on his second throw.  Fakkema then took the lead on his fourth throw.  Woltmann improved on his fifth throw, but not enough to take the lead and the Bates' thrower moved into second place on his throw.  On his final throw, Woltmann threw 48-02 1/2 to win it over Fakkema's 48-00 3/4, which was good for second.

In the Pole Vault, Liam Ackerman '21 led the way for MIT with a personal best victory of 15-05 1/2.  Scott Cameron '19 took second with a vault of 14-5 1/4.  MIT took the top five places, although they only earned points for the top two.

Meanwhile on the track, MIT failed to take advantage of one of their premier events, the Mile Run.  Billy Woltz '20 took the lead from the start, but did nothing with it, allowing the initial 400 to be a pedestrian 68 seconds.  Even at the pace, Ryan Nealis of Bates, and Aidan Gilson '19, Matthew Kearney '22 and Woltz of MIT separated themselves from the rest of the pack.  After the 400 Woltz picked up the pace, coming through the 800 in 2:12.  With three laps to go it looked as though Nealis could have been broken as he was at the back of the quartet, allowing a 10 meter lead to open up at one point when Gilson took the lead.  However, Gilson slowed, allowing Nealis to get back in the race and dominate in the final 200 to easily pull away.  Gilson was second in 4:23.81 and Kearney third in 4:24.17.

With Joa Kennedy '21 injured, MIT had no hurdlers, giving up 12 points to Bates in the 7-5-4-3-2-1 scoring format.  The Engineers knew they had to gain some points in the 400 and 600, events that could go either way.  In the 400 Ken Acquah '20 stepped up, ran a very competitive race, and even though the time was not particularly fast, his 53.50 earned a very important second place.  In the 600, Aidan Foucault-Etheridge '22 gave a glimpse of just what kind of competitor he is going to be.  With an already quick pace of sub 27 at the 200, as the pace slowed on the next turn, Foucault-Etheridge opened up his stride and powered to a 53.8 400 en route to an easy victory in 1:23.44.  Nick Duchatellier '22, just returning from bronchitis, managed a third in 1:27.88, .09 ahead of fourth place.

Alex Liu '22 made the finals of the 60 Meter Dash, finishing third in the trials.  He then finished second in 7.25 to provide an unexpected point. 

Kent Slaney '21 may have put a stamp on the start of his sophomore season.  Dropping down to the 800 he took control of the race with 400 meters to go when he passed teammate Ellery Rajagopal '21 on the inside.  Outkicking two Bates runners, Slaney won in 2:00.82.

Woltz rebounded from his Mile loss to win the 1000.  With 600 meters to go after a very slow first 400 of 63, Kearney took the lead and Woltz followed, taking the lead on the backstretch and never looking back, finishing in 2:35.37.

Back to the field events, Shaoul was up again in the Triple Jump.  Not having taken any triple jumps this year, Shaoul showed he was ready to take up where he left off last year--finishing as NCAA Division III runner-up at both the Indoor and Outdoor championships.  He only took two jumps, but won easily at 48-4, a mark that will easily qualify him for the NCAA Division III Championship in March.

The Weight Throw went in favor of the Engineers as Fakkema threw a near PR of 56-0 1/2 and Albert Menio '20 placed fourth with a throw of 48-9 1/2.

The High Jump could not have gone much better for Tech.  Not only did Caleb Harris '22 break through with a 6-05 1/2 second place finish, but Alec Reduker '20 won the event with a 6-07 1/2 clear, and barely missed 6-09 1/2

Still trailing Bates College, mostly due to no entries in the hurdles and one entry in the horizontal jumps and the 60, MIT knew they had to continue to dominate.  With Colby not taking many of the top places, even if MIT went 1-2 and Bates were to get the next two places the event points would be 12-7.  In the 200, Benton Wilson '21, in his first competition after returning from injury looked as though he has not lost a step.  He established a clear advantage right out of the blocks and proceeded to blow away the competition, running 22.75 for the victory.  In addition, Liu added a critical third in 24.19.

The 3K could ice the meet for MIT with a 1-2 finish, but Bates had a very capable runner in James Jones who had finished second in the New England region in Cross Country and earned All America honors at the NCAA Division III Championship.  The strategy was to let Bates establish the pace.  Unfortunately they were content to let the pace crawl at 75 seconds for the first 400.  Josh Derrick '20 took the lead for MIT to push up the pace a bit, which he did for about 800 meters.  When the pace slowed again Andrew Mah '22 and Josh Rosenkranz '19 took over and dropped the hammer.  The pace dropped to 68 then 65 and finished with a 32 final 200 for an 8:43.36 for Mah and 8:43.59 for Rosenkranz, providing the 1-2 desired finish.

The 4x400, a mish-mash of available healthy runners was not aware the outcome of the meet had been decided.  Diego Escobedo '22, Gilson, Andrew Shao '22 gave Foucault-Etheridge the baton about 15 meters down from Bates.  Foucault-Etheridge had one thought--win.  He made up most of the difference in the first 150, then made a mad dash at the end of the straight to take the lead with a 24.1 first 200 and only lengthened the difference all the way to the finish line with a 51.0 split.  The men won the meet 149 to 140 for Bates and 24 for Colby.

The women dominated from the start and unlike the men's meet, Colby somewhat impacted Bates ability to stay close by taking some of those points.

Similar to the men, the women began by taking control of the field events.  In the Long Jump, Sarah Ishamuddin '21 took the lead on her third attempt to win with a jump of 16-7 3/4.  In the High Jump, Margaret Redfield '21 did not miss an attempt through 5-0 1/4, as did Elise Lambert of Bates.  At 5-2 1/4, both missed, but Redfield won the jump-off, clearing 5-01 1/2.  While they did lose their first field event of the meet, Lily Papalia '22 came through with a second place throw of 34-5 and Folusho Jebutu '20 added a fourth place effort of 29-3 3/4 from a power position due to a slight injury.

On the track, Katie Bacher '20 and fellow juniors, Marissa McPhillips and Jenna Melanson dominated the Mile Run.  Controlling the pace, negative splitting from an 85 first 400 to a 78 then 77 and finally a 71 for a 5:11.16 victory Bacher ruled the event.  McPhillips ran 5:14.25 for second place and Melanson ran 5:17.39 for third.

For the next two events, the 60HH and the 400, Bates College made up some of the point disadvantage.  Lucy Lee '21 ran a nice season best of 9.79 in the 60HH to earn third place, which was all that was expected.

In the 400 Claire Melvin '22 came from far back to place second in 62.87.  Kristen Frombach '19 took the pace out a little too fast, splitting 29.1 and then could not hold on to the lead, but did manage third in 63.48.

Bailey Tregoning '19 got MIT back on the winning track in the 600.  She took control right from the start, running a pretty even pace of 33.5, 32.2, 33.0 to run 1:38.83 for the win.

The 60 Meter Dash was the Michelle Menkiti '20 show even though she took an injury from the event.  The junior won the trials in 7.90, a huge personal best.  However, in the final, after 40 meters, she slowed, clearly feeling a pulling in her hamstring.  She cruised across the line with a  8.10 victory, but was now out of the 200.  Yilinn Yang '22 was able to add a key third place in 8.44 after running 8.35 in the trials.

Back to the field events, MIT continued its domination.  Kari Stromhaug '19 led a 1-2-3-4 finish in the Pole Vault, clearing 12-1 1/2.  Jacqueline Ahrens '21 placed second at 11-7 3/4.

The Triple Jump was also a 1-2-3-4 MIT finish.  Jasmine Jin '20 took the lead on her first jump of 35-2, and that mark held.  Elizabeth Weeks '21 earned second with her jump of 34-11 3/4.

Jebutu nearly won the Weight Throw, missing first place by 5.5".  The junior threw 46-10 1/4.  Papalia earned fourth, throwing 38-0.

There was literally no competition in the 800, as Bacher and Margaret Trautner '20 were the only two in the race.  The pair worked together, gradually picking up the pace.  Bacher edged Trautner at the finish, 2:23.47 to 2:23.51.

Being the first meet of the season and with everyone just coming off a three week break for exams and the holidays, combined with the competition being more important that actual performances, few of the running events were expected to be fast, and for the most part that held true.  One that was not slow was the women's 1000.  Ayden Eickhoff of Bates set the pace and never looked back, winning in 2:57.19.  Kira Buttrey '22 went strong and stayed with Eickhoff, running 2:59.12 for second place.  McPhillips returned from the Mile to secure third place in 3:00.09.

Without Menkiti in the 200, Ishamuddin came through.  She came over from the Triple Jump to place second in the 200 in 27.95.

The 3K was another excellent race for MIT.  Katie Collins '21 and Gabby Enns '21 took the lead at the gun, establishing a pace of 82.5 seconds per quarter.  Helen Chavey of Colby was right behind them.  Chavey had beaten Collins in the NCAA Division III New England Region championship by one place, finishing 11th.  Collins made certain that did not happen on this day as she held the pace throughout the race to win in 10:19.12.  Enns also ran a very competitive race, earning third in a big PR of 10:30.42.

Frombach (63.8), Bacher (65.4), Melvin (62.6) and Trautner (62.7) placed second in the 4x400 and Buttrey (2:24.0), Tessa Weiss '20 (2:26.9), Skylar Brooks '20 (2:34.1) and Tregoning (2:21.0) won the 4x800 Relay.

The final score of the meet was MIT 155, Bates 117, Colby 60.

Next week, MIT travels to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME to face Bowdoin, Brandeis, Merrimack, Southern Maine and Tufts in a 6-way scoring meet.

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