March 29-30, 2002

The MIT Men's Track and Field team ended a warm and sunny week in Palo Alto, California on the campus of Stanford University at the annual Stanford Invitational. This meet is considered the kickoff to the Outdoor Track seaon for NCAA Division I schools as well as open athletes competing after their collegiate careers. The overwhelming competition did not seem to bother the Engineers, indeed it seemed to inspire some remarkable performances given how hard the team worked during the week leading up to the meet.

While the hard workouts and the week of 80 degree temperatures seemed to leave the representatives from Cambridge, Massachusetts tired, the competition seemed to bring out the best in them. Leading the way with a tie for 5th was Craig Mielcarz with a national qualifying jump of 6-8 in the high jump. Also qualifying provisionally for the NCAA Championship were Chris Khan in the Hammer with a throw of 168-11 and Sean Nolan in the 5000 with a time of 14:47.22.

Numerous personal bests and New England Division III qualifying performances were also achieved on the Stanford track and field. Craig Wildman ran a terrific race in the 3000 Steeplechase, running 9:48.17 for both a PR and a qualifying mark. Craig Mielcarz also had a good long jump effort of 20-11 1/4. Victor Williamson leaped 43-4 1/4 in the Triple Jump for a PR and was closely followed by Austin Neudecker with a 43-3 3/4 effort. Nate Ball started the outdoor season off well with a vault of 14-9. In the other running events, Mark Jeunnette seemed to run everything well. Mark began with an intermediate hurdle race in 58.02 and shortly afterwards won his section of the 800 with a 1:55.31 performance. The next day, Mark anchored the 1600 relay consisting of Yuval Mazor, Alan Raphael and Gabe Sanchez to an overall time of 3:24.63 with his 50.3 leg. Running the fastest MIT time since 2000, the 400 relay team of Zach Traina, Rick Rajter, Yuval Mazor and Marc Washington ran 43.63 despite two poor handoffs.

Other good performaces were supplied by; Junius Ho, who jumped 20-5 1/4 in the long jump and ran 15.86 in the 110 High Hurdles, Rick Rajter and Peter Bluvas, running 15.59 and 15.81 respectively in the 110 HH, Brian Anderson running 4:00.66 in the 1500, Matt Lehman and Yuval Mazor running 50.42 and 50.80 respectively in the 400 and Zach Traina running 22.85 and 11.33 in the 200 and 100 respectively.

Next Saturday, the annual Engineers Cup will be hosted by WPI as MIT tries to avenge their loss to RPI last year, when numerous athletes were out with injuries and illnesses.