Small Squad Battles Regional Rivals at Springfield

(1/26/2012 12:33 PM) Full Results

With a solid chunk of the team resting at home for next week's meets at Bowdoin and Boston University, the Jumbos suited up against New England rivals MIT, Keene State, and host Springfield College. After a hard week of practices and sandwiched between a home meet and BU's first invitational, the team looked to many of its underclassmen to step up, particularly in the distance events. 13 of the top 15 runners from cross country were off this weekend.

Still, there were impressive performances in all corners of the facility on Saturday. On the track, several first-years did exactly what was expected of them: step up. Seconds behind junior Sam Haney's third-place finish in the 1000m, frosh Joseph St. Pierre ran a hard-fought race to nab a scoring spot. Freshman Alex Sheltzer led a group of four classmates in the 600m with his 1:26.22. The duo of junior Adam Brosh and freshman Marshall Pagano ran gutsy races in the mile to finish in 4:28.46 and 4:30.28, huge steps forward for both of them.

On the straightaway, freshman Ptah Osayande found his way into the finals of the 60mH despite using two lead legs. He chopped half a second of his time in the finals and put together a much stronger race. Junior Lawrence Xia led the way in 200m in 24.05 with frosh Wylan Simpson on his heels in 24.31, both solid times on Springfield's narrow oval. Wylan also scored in the 400m along with junior Vinnie Lee.

Two ten-point finishes came in the field events. Junior Brad Nakanishi grabbed the top spot in the pole vault and took some great attempts at a school-record and likely nationally qualifying height of 16 feet. In the sector, freshman Brian Williamson won the shot put with his first throw of 14.74m. Backing them up as point scorers were sophomore David Sutherland in the vault and the 3-4 finish of junior Curtis Yancy and senior co-captain Adam Aronson in the weight.

Though the trend of split-squad weekends continues next week with the Jumbos headed north to Bowdoin and south to BU, look for new qualifiers to come out of these competitive meets.


Full Results