Miles away from the Bacchanalian bliss of Ivies, it was business as usual for the men of the Bowdoin track team, which finished a disappointing eighth at the NESCAC Championships. The Bears scored a total of 40 points in the meet at Hamilton College to edge out ninth-place Amherst by one tally.
Williams College was crowned champion with 195 points in a victory over second-place Tufts, a victory made so much sweeter by the fact that the two teams shared last year's title.
The weather at Hamilton College proved to be a setback for the competitors as sweltering heat gave way to winds as the day wore on.
"It was a grueling day for a meet," said Thompson Ogilvie '10. "It started off really hot, around 90 degrees on the track, but even when it started to cool down at the end of the meet, the wind began to blow furiously."
Bowdoin's best finish came in the 4x400-meter relay, a source of continued success this season, as the team of Zach Winters '11, Kyle Hebert '10, Eric Lee '08 and Brendan Egan '08 placed second behind Williams.
"The 4x400 relay team made a great effort," Coach Peter Slovenski said in praise of his four runners. "Zach and Eric led off with 50-second splits, and Brendan and Kyle both finished their legs of the relay in 49 seconds."
In the 1,500-meter race, Ogilvie bested the provisional qualifying mark for nationals with his time of 3:55.23. Only four seconds off of a Hamilton runner's first place time, Ogilvie finished the hotly contested race in sixth.
"I went into the race concerned about finishing in the top eight to get points for the team," Ogilvie said of his pre-race jitters. "Being the most competitive race of the day, I was a little worried that I might not be able to score since I was seeded seventh. Fortunately I was able to hang on with the lead pack and finish in sixth, and at the same time qualify provisionally for nationals."
Ogilvie will be joined by Nate Krah '08, who qualified for the NCAA Championship just a few days earlier in the 10,000-meter race at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia. In a race littered with Division I opponents, Krah ran the first 5,000 meters in a blistering 15:10, following in the final 5K with a time of 15:25 for a solid seventeenth-place finish.
Damon Hall-Jones '09 rounded out Bowdoin's best showings on the track with a 22.77-second sixth-place finish in the 200-meter dash.
Some of Bowdoin's best finishes came off the track, however, as the Bears saw great success in the field events. Luke Fairbanks '09 added to Bowdoin's point total in the shot put with a 14.72-meters throw for fourth place.
Bowdoin's off-track success continued in the discus as James Bingham '10 earned fourth place with a throw of 38.95-meters. Fairbanks, on the heels of his shot put toss, hurled the discus two meters short of Bingham for a ninth-place tally in the event.
Twenty of Bowdoin's runners will be heading to Connecticut this weekend for the New England Division III meet at the Coast Guard Academy.