March 4, 2000

With one week remaining before the NCAA Division III Championships, MIT's provisional qualifiers went to better their chances of making next week's meet by taking the trip to Wheaton College, the host school for the ECAC Division III Championship. Some teams take all those who qualify for this meet in hopes of scoring a lot of points. MIT chooses to only take those who have already qualified for Nationals, or are very close to doing so.

Sean Montgomery '01, was one of those who had provisionally qualified in the 1500. He was ranked 11th nationally, thus having a reasonable chance of getting in, but wanted to improve his chances as well as finally run a fast, smart race. All goals were accomplished as Montgomery took the approach of letting others do the work and run his own race. The pace went out quickly as Sean came through the 400 in 62 and was well toward the rear of the pack. Showing patience, Sean moved up through the pack as the fast pace wore on the legs and lungs of those in front of him. At the 1200 mark, Sean came through in 3:07 and moved up to the leaders. With 200 to go he took the lead, and never relinquished it as he ran 45 seconds for the final 300 to record a 3:52.22 victory, which qualified him automatically for Nationals.

Chris McGuire '00, and Dan Feldman '02, were not as fortunate. Ranked 12th and 13th in NCAA Division III respectively, both wanted to run a faster time and qualify automatically. Neither of the Tech runners ran their best. However, McGuire did finish second in 14:57.22 and Feldman, after leading for the 2nd mile, was unable to hold the pace and faded to 5th in 15:04.38.

Later in the afternoon, Montgomery joined the Todd Rosenfield '01, Matt Lehman '03, and Yuval Mazor '02, at the IC4A Championship being held at Harvard to run the Mile Relay. Having already automatically qualified for the NCAA Championship, the quartet just wanted some more experience and to try to run a faster time. After an hour delay, Rosenfield led off the second heat in the trials with a 50.0 440, which was a personal best. Lehman started the 2nd leg trying to make up the ground Rosenfield had lost despite his fast leadoff. The 23.3 opening 220 got the best of him as he fatigued with a little over 110 yards out. Matt held on to run a 50.1 but was well behind the leaders. Mazor went out determined to make up the difference. Yuval opened up with a 22.9 first lap to make up some of the difference, and continued on to run 49.7 and put MIT in position to run a new personal best for the season. However, Montgomery was too far behind the leaders and too far in front of those behind him to spark a great quarter from tired legs. Sean finished with a 50.2 to give the Engineers a 3:20.27 for the Mile Relay, which is equal to a 3:19.07 1600 Relay.

At Nationals, Sean will run the 1500 and anchor the 1600 Relay. Feldman and McGuire will hope to get accepted into the 5K field at Illinois Wesleyan, the site of this years NCAA Division III Championship.