March 6, 1999
MIT's Men's Track and Field Team took advantage of two championship meets in town to qualify Leif Seed in the 800, and improve Dan Feldman's national qualifying mark in the 5000.
The IC4A Championships, being held at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston, have very strict qualifying standards. Only three MIT runners had qualified; Sean Montgomery in the 1500, Mark Strauss in the 5000, and Leif Seed in the 1000. Sean could not run because of his broken toe, and Mark was not going to run in the 5000 because he would have to run on Sunday, which would not give him adequate recovery for the 5000 at Nationals on Friday. Leif could run the 1000, but he wanted to see if he could qualify for nationals in the 800 since there is no 1000 at the National Championships.
Current IC4A rules allow a team one free track and one free field entry if no other track or field qualifier are competing in the meet. MIT decided to see if Seed could qualify in the 800 even though he had only run 1:58 this season, a full 4 seconds slower than the next fastest qualifier. Leif took advantage of the quality field, running 26, 54, and 1:23 splits en route to a 1:53.83 performance. While this time easily met the 1:55 provisional standard for nationals, it still only put Leif about 16th on the qualifying list. Needing a 1:52.24 to meet the automatic standard, Leif decided to go join his teammates at Boston University to give the 800 another try.
Leif had been entered in the ECAC meet all along, but with a 1:58 seed, and the 800 being run in sections on time, he would be running against other 1:57 and 1:58 runners. Now, with his 1:53 seed, he would be guaranteed the fast section. There were 5 hours between races, but it would be a serious challenge nevertheless.
The ECAC 800 had similar splits. The 200 was again 26, the 400 a little slower in 55, but the 600 was right back on with a 1:23.9. Leif's legs could not respond when he needed it most, finishing in 1:55.02. It will be a "wait and see" on whether or not Leif gets into the national field.
In the 5000, Dan Feldman and Chris McGuire were trying to better their provisional qualifying times, while Mike Parkins was trying to get his first qualifying performance. The pace was certainly fast enough with the first mile being run in 4:38. By the 2 mile mark, Chris and Mike had begun to fall back a little, but Dan was still in the lead pack of three, coming through in 9:25. The third mile slowed a little with a couple of 74 second quarters, which brought them through 3 miles in 14:18. Dan was not able to finish strong enough to meet the 14:47 automatic qualifying time, but he did lower his own freshman record to 14:52.08. McGuire was not able to improve his time, running 15:03.69. Parkins ran a season best of 15:06.28. It is not likely Dan and Chris will make it in nationals with their times of 14:52 and 14:56 but will be entered just in case.
Not given the opportunity to run the 1000 at the New England Division III Championship so that the team would have a stronger 3200 Relay, Phil Loiselle was given the chance here. Phil ran a very evenly paced race to a PR of 2:33.03. Phil's time was good enough to put him 10th on the all-time 1000 list.
Mark Strauss, already qualified automatically in the 5000, decided to enter the 3000 to get a little speed work and to see if he could get the 3000 school record. Basically a 2 man race between Strauss and Paul Alsdorf of Williams, the runner with the fastest 5K in the country for Division III, the pace of 4:31 at the mile left the rest of the field behind. The next 3 quarters were in 70, 68, and 68, putting Mark a little off the pace to get the record, as he fell off of Alsdorf by about 5 seconds. Making a furious effort to reclaim the race and to get the record, Mark ran a 31 last 200. He fell 2 seconds short of the former, and less than a second of the latter. Nevertheless the effort was a great one, giving notice that he is ready for nationals next week.
Also competing were Todd Chamoy and Jason Dailey in the Weight Throw. Both are seniors and both are close to the provisional qualifying mark. However, neither of them were able to put together a good throw as they finished with 47-5 3/4, and 45-11 1/4 respectively.
Sam Thibault vaulted to see if he could improve on his 13-6 season best but after a couple of good attempts at 13-9 he missed his final attempt, settling for a 13-3 mark.
On Monday night, the web site at Ohio Northern <http://www.onu.edu/user/fs/tglon/winter/ncaa.html> will list those who are in the National Championship.