On Saturday, the men's track team will be competing in the New Hampshire Invitational at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). In addition to UNH and Bowdoin, the University of Southern Maine, Quinnipiac and Colby-Sawyer will also be competing.
The track team will face D-I and D-III competition at the invitational, which is its last chance to acquire good seed marks and times for the state meet next Saturday. The meet will serve as a stepping stone for the postseason, and the men want to build on their good performances last week to reach the level necessary to contend for the state title.
Performances last week at the Middlebury Invitational earned the team a second-place finish, beating Middlebury and Vermont, but falling to Springfield.
Starting off, Matt Hillard '12 placed second in the 1500-meter with a time of 4:06, two seconds behind the first-place finisher and one second in front of Coleman Hatton '10, who took fourth.
"The race went well," Hillard said. "It played into my strengths as a runner because I was able to just sit for 1300 [meters] and then kick it in for the last 200. A lot of great performances from last week sets us up well for the state meet and future championship meets."
These performances came from Colin Ogilvie '12, Sam Frizell '12, and Will Stafstrom '12, who took second through fourth place in the 3000-meter steeplechase, jumping over three hurdles and one water pit per lap. Then, Kyle Hebert '10 placed third in the 400-meter, but his place does not do justice to his sub-50-second performance.
"The 400 was one of the highest level events of the day with NCAA caliber competitors from Springfield and Bowdoin," said Coach Peter Slovenski. "Kyle was third in 49.55, and that's the first time I've ever seen someone run sub-50 and place third in a regular season 400 race."
Sam Chick '13 and Riker Wikoff '12 took first and second in the 400-meter hurdles, respectively.
"It was great to see [them] go 1-2 in the 400 hurdles," Slovenski said. "That is a tough race, and they both showed a lot of guts to run so well in the final 100 meters of the race."
In the field events, senior captain Colin Hay had a solid day placing first in the triple jump and second in the long jump. Alex Lucyk '12 placed first in the pole vault and Drew Zembruski '13 jumped a personal record in the high jump, placing second only because he had more faults. In the throws, Matt Ramos '12 threw a personal best in the hammer to start off the day.
According to senior captain Nate Bingham, this "really energized the rest of us, and I was able to capitalize on that adrenaline with good throws in both the hammer and the discus."
These throws led to first-place finishes for the team in both throwing events.
"As a group, the throwers really set the bar high at the Middlebury and Miami meets," Bingham added. "We are looking forward to building upon that next week at UNH and then at the championship meets later in the season."