Five NCAA Qualifying Marks for MIT Highlight Maine Meet
April 11, 2009
With many of the men's team members suffering from flu like symptoms, causing two key performers to miss the meet, and a couple missing the meet for personal reasons, MIT was facing a serious deficit going into its meet versus three teams from the state of Maine; Bates, Colby and Southern Maine (USM). Despite a furious flourish of points from MIT at the end, the lack of sprinters and jumpers did them in as they lost to a strong and balanced Bates squad for the first time in a regular season competition since 1983. The final score was Bates 227 and MIT 215. Southern Maine, ahead for much of the meet finished a close third at 210, while host Colby completed the scoring with 51.
The Tech women were not without any key performers, but due to those coming off of being sick and a couple nursing nagging leg issues, the team was certainly not at full strength. As a result, the lack of depth from MIT, combined with some great performances from Colby College, the meet came down to the final relays. MIT came out on top with 161 points to 154 for Colby and 105 for Bates. Southern Maine did not bring a women's team to the meet.
As a highlight to the meet there were five NCAA qualifying performances by the Engineers. Four of them were earned by the women with Jacqui Wentz '10 and Emily Hwang '09, leading the way. Wentz ran an MIT record on the way to her 10:47.97, the second fastest time in the country for Division III at this time. Hwang jumped 12-3 1/2 to reset her own MIT record and vault to the highest mark in the country thus far. Portia Jones '12, looked much better in her second try at the 400IH, this time running 63.30 to provisionally qualify for nationals, set the MIT freshman record, and of course, win the race. Also in the pole vault, Karin Fisher '11, cleared 11-8 1/2 to provisionally qualify for the NCAA Division III Championship. On the men's side, Greg Tao '10, improved his provisional mark to 15-7 in the vault to win the event.
With Stephen Morton '10, and Mattias Flander '11 missing the meet due to illness, MIT lost a lot of potential points in the long jump, triple jump, 100 and 200 meter races. In addition, Tony McDonald '10, was unable to compete in the throws and Richard Prevost '11, missed the bus, costing the Engineers some big points in the steeplechase. Others on the team stepped up and did their best to win the meet, but with eight scoring places per event in the men's meet, a couple of high places could easily be out weighed by multiple scorers from another team.
Early on, MIT would place relatively high but then get outscored due to the depth of Bates and USM. MIT outscored their opponents in only four individual events, the 800, 1500, 5000 and pole vault. MIT displayed an overall well balanced team, but the depth was just not there on this day. Behind by 30-40 points for most of the day, MIT came back strong in the pole vault at the end of the meet. Following Tao, MIT placed 4-5-6-7-8 for a total of 24 points. Following up that score, the 5K runners, led by Jake Ruzevick '09, who won in 15:09.73, placed 1-3-4-5 for another 24 points, finally passing Southern Maine, but not getting close enough to displace Bates College.
MIT had five other winners on the day. Vlad Sobes '11, took the victory in the javelin with a throw of 180-2. Nick Leonard '11, was the only two event winner, taking both hurdle events. Leonard won the 110HH in a personal best of 16.06 and then came back with another personal best of 56.48 in the 400IH. Yermie Cohen '09, earned the other individual win with a 4:01.83 come from behind victory in the 1500. The men also took the 4x800 relay win to end the meet with Stephen Serene '12, providing the heroics with a 2:00 anchor leg to come from behind and provide MIT the victory.
The women's meet was back and forth with Colby all day. Lacking depth in the throwing events and giving Jones and Magnuson '10, the day off from the jumping events for the most part, MIT lost to Colby in the field events, minus the pole vault, by a score of 69 to 31. Fortunately, Tech won 12 of 20 events and scored 20 of a possible 24 points in the pole vault to claim the close victory.
In addition to Hwang's win in the pole vault, MIT claimed two other victories in the field events. Vicky Hsu '09, claimed one in the javelin with a great toss of 108-9. Hazel Briner '11, threw a personal best in the shot put to win in 37-4 1/2. MIT claimed most of the victories in the running events and probably would have won all but one with a totally healthy and confident Margaret Leibovic '10, to win the 100 and 200. The only other running event the women lost was the 1500, despite an outstanding personal best of 4:44.85 by Jennifer Doyle '09.
In the 100HH, Amy Magnuson took the victory in 14.97 to narrowly beat teammate Portia Jones, who ran 15.09 to go along with her 400IH victory. Martha Gross '12, won the 400 in 61.73 despite going out much too fast for the first 200. Andrea Bradshaw '09, took care of business as usual in the 800 with a 2:19.13 victory. Anna Holt-Gosselin earned the victory in the 5K with a 17:56.81. MIT also took all three relay events, despite shuffling personnel around. Jones, Jamie Simmons '12, Bradshaw and Magnuson took the 4x100 in 50.54. Simmons, Kirsten Aarsvold '11, Adrienne Bolger '09, and Jones ran 4:06.01 for the win in the 4x400 and Wentz, Bradshaw, Erika Erickson '09, and Doyle completed the 4x800 in 9:31.47.
Next week, MIT has their final tune-up prior to the NEWMAC Conference Championship. The teams will travel to Springfield College, hoping for a warm weather invitational. Although many will rest for the upcoming championships, MIT does hope for some strong performances.