Strong Showing at Bowdoin; Watanabe runs NCAA-best 800m

(1/24/2017 11:50 AM) Full Results

This Saturday, we headed up to Bowdoin for our one indoor meet outside of the Boston area until the National Championships. It was a smooth trip, with strong competition from the other four teams and another handful of DIII New England indoor qualifiers across all event groups. Resting many of our top athletes and not competing in all events, we placed 3rd as a team to MIT and Bowdoin and beat out Southern Maine and Merrimack.

The performance of the day may have been sophomore Hiroto Watanabe’s run in the 800m, as his 1:54.41 currently sits as the top time in the country for all of Division III. More impressive is that he led the race wire to wire, winning by over two seconds and knocking off 3 seconds from his indoor PR, his time now 7th all time indoor for Tufts in the 800m. Junior Drew DiMaiti picked up a win in the 600m, running 1:22.14 to lead both tri-captain Nick Usoff and rookie Roman Lovell to also earn DIII New England qualifiers in that event – they placed 3rd and 4th respectively. Lovell’s classmates ran well in the 600m too, with Jackson Mihm and Dylan McEniry both improving on their marks from last weekend as they adjust to collegiate training.

The sprints again saw many fine performances, with Blake Coolidge running the 3rd and 4th fastest 60m times in school history to go along with his record-tying mark from last week. He finished second behind a DII runner from Merrimack, one of four Jumbos to qualify for the 60m dash final. Rookie Robert Jones, junior Peter Clark, and sophomore Tommy Miller all ran 7.20 or faster to earn bids to the Regional Championship at home on February 18th. Miller followed that up with another qualifier in the 200m, joined by classmate Anthony Kardonsky to give the Jumbos eight qualifiers in the short sprints, easily leading the New England region at this early stage of the season.

Sophomore Josh Etkind opened up his season with solid marks as he placed second in the 60m Hurdles and fourth in the Triple Jump, earning New England qualifiers in both. Tri-captain Tommy Wang and sophomore Henry Hintermeister joined Josh in qualifying for the hurdles at the New England championship. The sophomores as a whole had a strong day, with Charlie Pennington matching his strong high jump (1.88m / 6-2) from last week and PRing by half a foot in the long jump (6.20m). Colin Raposo ran a flat PR of 4:21 in the mile, four seconds faster than his time at Bowdoin last year, doing much of the early work leading the race. Rory Buckman PRd in the 3K, and Dylan Jones was within a couple seconds both of a PR and a DIII qualifying effort in the same event.

The most consistent group of the day was the throwers, as every single Jumbo saw an improvement in one or both of their throws from last week. Freshman Kevin Quisumbing took first honors in the shot put, PRing on his first attempt as well as earning a DIII qualifier in the Weight Throw with a big new PR that puts him at second all-time on our freshmen list. Graduate student Ife Adebayo scored in both throws, rookie Christian Trebisacci bettered both his shot and weight from last week, and junior James Aronson PRd in the weight throw by almost a full meter. We finished the meet with second places in both the 4x4 and 4x8 relays, with fastest splits coming from anchor Tommy Doyle in the 4x4 and an aggressive leg by Sam Little in the 4x8.

As we see strong efforts across all event groups, we will have two meets at Gantcher in the next two weeks to continue adding qualifiers and have opportunities to compete and PR at home. With only two meets under our belts, there are just four events in which we are yet to have a New England qualifier – 3000m, Pole Vault, and two events we have not contested yet – 5000m and Heptathlon. Go Jumbos.


Full Results