MIT PREPARES FOR CHAMPIONSHIPS WITH GREAT PERFORMANCES
Morton Sets Another Freshman Record
April 21, 2007
New England track and field finally witnessed the arrival of spring on Saturday with temperatures in the 70s and sunny skies, although a sometimes strong and shifting wind was troublesome for the track athletes. MIT athletes responded with numerous personal bests, including five top 10 all-time performances. In all, 15 men's and women's teams showed up to compete at the MIT Spring Invitational.
Stephen Morton again led the way, despite not being able to hold any food down since the day before. Morton opened up with a casual 21-7 1/2 in the long jump and anchored the 4x100 team before moving to his first ever 400 meter race. Morton went out a little fast but was nevertheless in control as he came through the 200 in low 23, probably saying to himself that he should be finishing about now. Taking over the lead in the third 100, Morton hit the homestretch along with a wall of wind. Morton still pulled away, finishing in first and with a new freshman record of 49.02, taking down William Fedus's week long record of 50.07. Morton's time was good for seventh on the MIT all-time list.
In the pole vault, the lads backed-up their new mohawk haircuts with season or personal bests across the board. Omari Stephens upped his top-10 performance with a 14-8 3/4 victory. Freshman, Greg Tao, tied with Stephens at 14-8 3/4 but lost on misses. Both Stephens and Tao are now tied for 9th on the all-time list. Patrick Barragan tied his personal best and set an outdoor best with a 13-3 vault and Nate Sharpe jumped to an outdoor best of 12-3 1/4.
Another freshman, Johannes Schneider, took the lead in the 3000 Steeplechase and never looked back, winning in a personal best of 9:31.61 to make number 10 on the all-time MIT list. Schneider should move up the list quickly once he gets to the competition of the championships.
The final top-10 mark was made by Eric Khatchadourian in the 10K. Khatch moved up to number six on the all-time list, qualified provisionally for nationals and missed IC4A qualifying by .23 seconds. Joe Roy-Mayhew provided company for Khatch through 2800 meters but from that point on it was Khatch against the clock. Running 1600 splits of 5:02, 4:54, 4:58, 4:57, 5:05 and 5:02, Khatch was still able to kick in a 70 second final quarter to easily win the race. MIT had four other 10K runners under 33:00; Roy-Mayhew in 32:22.13, Hemu Arumugam in 32:25.24, Chris Wong in 32:29.48 and Trevor Rundell in 32:41.81 as MIT swept the first five places.
MIT added two more runners to the growing list of sub-16:00 5K runners for the season. Yermie Cohen ran a personal best of 15:43.11 to place third and freshman, Jack Bourbonnais, ran 15:53.28 to become number seven among the nine MIT runners who have broken 16:00 for the season.
Similar to Stephen Morton moving up to the 400 for the first time, Liam Fedus moved up to the 800 for the first time. While Fedus did not move into the top-10 list, he did win the event despite getting boxed in and using far too much energy to get out of it. Running 28 for the first 200, the leaders came though the 400 split in 58. With Fedus on the rail behind two of his teammates, he decided diplomacy was not going to get him anywhere. Fedus yelled to his teammates to let him through but they did not know who was yelling at them. Fedus then shoved his way though and took control of the race. Coming into the homestretch the wind started taking its toll on Fedus but he held on for a fine 1:56.11 debut.
Next week, the Engineers travel to the Coast Guard Academy for the defense of the NEWMAC Conference Championship. MIT, Springfield and Coast Guard will be pretty even on paper entering the meet.