October 11, 2002

The 60 degree temperatures and light drizzle guaranteed a fast race in the All Division New England Championship, the one race each year that allows the best teams from Division I, II and III to go at each other to see who rules New England. Providence College, the 14th ranked team in Division I, cruised to an easy overall victory with a 36 point total and boasted the individual champion, Adam Sutton with an impressive time of 23:31 on the 4.95 mile course. UMass Lowell, the 7th ranked team in Division II, held their own, finishing 4th. The Division III schools were led by Keene State in 7th, ranked 6th in the nation and Williams in 9th, the 9th ranked team. Bates College finished in 10th, Bowdoin in 11th (10th ranked) and MIT 12th (19th ranked) in the 46 team field.

MIT was led by Ben Schmeckpeper, who ran an all time PR of 24:44, the second fastest ever by an MIT runner on the Franklin Park course, which was revised in 1992. Ben finished 15th overall to earn All New England honors. Sean Nolan followed closely behind in 24:52, also a Franklin Park PR, good for 23rd place. Freshman Steve Maltas continued to improve each race with a 25:33 for 64th position, his first time under 26 minutes. Tech's weakness, a large gap between 3rd and 4th runners, continued to haunt them, even though Brian Anderson ran a personal best of 26:18 on the course. Despite getting very little sleep this week due to academic commitments, Brian finished 135th place. Carlos Renjifo finished 5th for MIT and 145th overall with an all time PR of 26:24 to close out the scoring.

MIT ran a very well paced race, showing patience and focus en route to their outstanding finish. In the sub varsity race, Tech ran even better, placing in a tie for 3rd in the 26 team field, first among Division II and III colleges. MIT boasted a :21 spread for their top 5 runners, led by Albert Liu in 26:25. Freshmen, Eric Khatchadourian (26:28), David Gray (26:35) and Fivos Constantinou (26:43) followed to show Tech's depth and youth. Ian Driver closed out the scoring with a personal best of 26:46 to place 51st overall. MIT placed 12 runners in the two races within 2:11 of each other.

Only four teams from the New England region can go on to compete at the NCAA Division III Championship. MIT, finishing in 5th in this meet and 50 points behind the 4th team, has a lot of work to do if they hope to return to the national championship on November 23rd.

Next week, the Engineers travel to Westfield State to run in the James Early Invitational and test the regional qualifying course. Many, if not all of the top Division III teams in the region will be there, this time without the Division I competition.