For Second Year in Succession, Williams Wins Meet in
Last Event
Last Year, the first Quad Meet of the season, Williams College hosted MIT, Middlebury, and Norwich. The meet came down to the Pole Vault which had been delayed. There were two vaulters remaining, one for MIT and one for Williams. Whoever won the event would also win the meet. Williams won that meet by 1 point.
This year, MIT is definitely in a rebuilding year. However, Williams may still be the best team in the region but they also lost a lot to graduation and transfer. MIT again brought the meet down to the last event with a chance to win. Williams again proved to have the competitive and talent edge as they defeated Tech 230 to 222. UMass/Dartmouth was a distant third with 67 points, followed by WPI with 65.
Quad Cup meets permit a school to enter up to 4 entries per event. Similarly to the way dual meets were scored, 50% of the competitors or 8 places are scored with the scoring being 9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Therefore each event has a total of 37 points with any one team having the possibility of scoring 27 points if they sweep the first four places.
MIT began the meet by getting 18 points in the Weight Throw to Williams nine. Mike Butville '98 led the way with a 49-0 1/2 effort for second place. Jason Dailey '99 had a personal best of 47-11 for 4th, George Torres '99 followed with a personal best 46-1 1/2 throw for 5th, and Brian Wong '99 also threw a personal best of 41-11 for 7th place.
The Long Jump was going on at the same time but not with the same results. Ravi Sastry '98 won with a personal best jump of 21-11 1/2 but the only other place earned by MIT was an 8th place by Tyson Lawrence '01 with a leap of 18-10 1/2. Williams scored 16 points to keep the meet within 3 points.
The 55 Meter High Hurdles were the next finals to finish and Sastry continued his day of personal bests with an effort of 7.94 to win easily. Also scoring for Tech was Jeff Daniels '01 with a huge PR of 8.74. Williams scored 17 points to pull ahead by 1 point 42-41.
The 1500, typically MIT's best event, was hindered by a last minute injury by Leif Seed '99. This prompted Tech to switch Joel Ford from the 600. Mike Parkins '99 continued his dominance this young season by winning in a personal best of 4:04.09. Ford followed in fifth, with freshman Phil Loiselle taking 6th in a personal best of 4:13.13, and Sohail Husain '98 garnering 7th in 4:15.48. Nevertheless, Williams outscored MIT by 1 point and lengthened their lead to 2.
The 400 was won by MIT freshman Todd Rosenfield in 53.08. Neal Karchem followed in third, running 53.93. Kamal Mokeddem placed 6th overall, running a personal best of 55.03 out of the slow section. The Engineers outscored Williams 18-7 in this event and retook the lead 77-68.
The High Jump was not a good event for either team as Williams cut the lead in half by outscoring Tech 11-7.
Williams star sophomore thrower, Dave Stuhlsatz, won the Shot Put with a toss of 52-11 1/2, but MIT outscored the Ephmen 16-15. Patrick Dannen '98 led the way with a personal best of 43-7 for 2nd place. Also with a personal best was Torres with a throw of 42-0 for 5th. Butville followed in 6th and freshman Brian Rogers placed 7th.
The 600 was supposed to be a big event for Tech but an injury to Sean Montgomery '01 and switching Ford to the 1500 left the Engineers with untested ability in the event. Ed Tolson '01 was able to secure 4th with a 1:30.82. Other MIT runners who placed were Gus Blomquist in 5th, Ashley Clayborne '99 in 6th, and Tony Pelosi in 8th. Despite the slow times, MIT only lost 2 points to Williams and still led overall by 4.
MIT's only sprinter is hurdler/jumper Ravi Sastry. Ravi ran 6.88 to get 5th place for Tech's only points. Williams scored 16 to take an 8 point overall lead.
Williams College Decathlon All-American, Derek Sasaki-Scanlon won the Pole Vault, but MIT took 2nd - 5th places to outscore Williams 22-15, and pull within 1 point. Matt Potts '00 led the way with a personal best of 13-0. Following were Sam Thibault '00 in 3rd, Sam Sidiqi '99 in 4th, and Steve Lefkowitz '00 in 5th.
Ford came back in the 800 and won with a time of 2:01.77. Freshman Ken Walker ran a great race and garnered 2nd place with a 2:02.23 personal best. Chuck Van Buren '98 secured 4th place, and Jeff Billing '01 ran to 7th place. This turned out to be the Engineers best event as they scored 23 points to Williams 13, thus giving MIT a 9 point lead.
Parkins followed Ford's effort with a win of his own in the 1000, running a personal best of 2:37.22. Husain doubled back from the 1500 and earned 4th place, and Ray Molnar '00 faded in the last lap but held on to 6th. MIT lost 2 points to Williams but maintained a 7 point lead.
MIT's weakness in the sprints showed up again in the 200. Although all of Tech's runners ran season bests, they were only able to score 6th, 7th, and 8th places. Sastry led the way with 24.18. He was followed by Karchem and Rosenfield. Williams now had a 3 point lead with only 4 events to go.
MIT needed some points and Parkins was asked if he could run sub 16:00 after his already busy day, without getting hurt. He said he could and indeed he did, running 15:44.08 for 4th. Chris McGuire '00 returned from the injured list to run his first race of the season and get 2nd place with a 15:33.09. Running personal bests were freshmen Mark Strauss, 15:51.63 for 5th, and Ed Keehr 16:19.21 for 7th. The strategy worked and MIT now had a 5 point lead.
The Triple Jump did not work out the MIT's advantage as Williams outscored Tech 14-7. Leading the way for MIT was freshman Kalpak Kothari with a personal best of 41-2 1/2 for 5th place. Sastry was 7th with 38-3 1/2, and Lawrence was 8th. Williams now led by 2 with only the relays to go.
Because only 3 of the 4 teams declared for the two relays, the scoring was to be 9-6-0. This of course meant that MIT would have to either beat Williams in both relays or win one and have Williams finish 3rd (which was very unlikely). The stage was set and the Johnson Athletic Center was rocking. One could hardly hear anything as the Williams and MIT athletes were spread around the track.
Tech decided to load the 1600 Relay with their remaining resources. Not having Seed and Montgomery certainly limited the strategy. Tech remained right on Williams back until 150 meters to go when Sasaki-Scanlon pulled away from Karchem. The team of Rosenfield, Martin Suresh '99, Ford, and Karchem ran 3:34.02.
With only the 3200 Relay, MIT had to win and hope that Williams finish 3rd. It was not to be. Tech fell behind at the beginning and never recovered. The quartet of Husain, Walker, Van Buren, and Loiselle finished in 2nd with a 8:24.77.
Next week, the 2-1 Engineers travel to Bates to face Bowdoin, Colby, and Southern Maine.