NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Trenton Charles and Marcus Woods set school records in the 60m and 200m respectively Saturday afternoon as they led a rampaging Yale men's track and field team to second place in the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton tri-meet.
The Bulldogs finished second at this meet last year, scoring 47 points. This year they finished with 63 – a staggering improvement that is testament to their hard work, the work of their coaching staff and the leadership of captain Kyle Macauley.
The day began, as always, with the field events, and Andrew Rochon set the Bulldogs off in style, winning the weight throw with a mark of 16.88m. Jack Dunn bagged an important two points, finishing in third. Rochon then competed in the shot put, finishing fifth with a new season's best of 15.24m.
In the high jump, senior Spencer O'Neill continued his impressive run of form. The top three athletes all leaped 2.04m, and O'Neill was cruelly pushed into third on count-back. Across the cage, Darius Jing and Odera Nweke were also feeding off of the home support in the long jump. Nweke set a new PR of 6.97m to finish second, while Jing came third, securing five more points in total for the team.
Itamar Fayler once again shouldered the responsibility for setting the tone on the track when he went in the 60m hurdles heats. As usual, he performed, qualifying in third with a run of 8.22s. His performance, however, was quickly overshadowed by that of Charles in the 60m dash heats. Nicknamed 'The Blur', Charles rocketed out of the blocks, leaving the field in his wake as he hurtled across the line in 6.75s, setting a new school record in the process.
Up next on the track was the mile. Nick Dahl and Harrison Smith went up against a large field including seven Princeton athletes. Smith, clearly inspired by 'The Blur', took the lead from the gun, leading the field through 800m and working well to set up the fast-finishing Dahl, who whipped off the bend as he came up to bell, kicking into a cacophony of home support to take the win in 4:05.12, closing his last 400m in an eye-catching 55.91. Smith came home in ninth, running a negative-split that ought to give him confidence in the 3000m next weekend.
Attention then returned to the center of Coxe Cage for the sprint finals. Fayler false-started in the 60m hurdles – the first thing he has done wrong in a Yale vest – meaning the pressure was on the short sprinters to secure a considerable number of points in the straight 60m dash. In a phenomenal display of power, Charles once again ran 6.75s to win the race and reinforce his status as a real contender at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships in three weeks. Phil Zuccaro finished fourth in 6.87, merely 0.04s off second place. All five of the Bulldogs broke 6.95s.
Fergal Burnett-Small, Christopher Colbert and Juma Sei then lined up in the 400m. Colbert finished fourth in a new personal record of 49.33s, while Sei was beaten at the line by Princeton rival Michael Phillippy. Sei ran 48.17, while the winner ran 48.15. In the last of the long sprints, the 500m, Jonathan Ascher finished his last race in Coxe Cage in third.
It was then the turn of the middle-distance specialists in the 800m. The race went out slow, with Cameron Wyman controlling the pace from the front and Chris Brown running smoothly in the pack. Wyman ramped the pace up deceptively, hitting full speed as he pulled away in the last 100m, with Brown fighting hard in his first college 800m just behind and Kohleman Swift running strongly in the pack. Wyman finished first in 1.54.11, half a second ahead of the field. Brown will take immense confidence from his fourth-place finish, while Swift ran 1.57.64 to take sixth.
The 1000m that followed was arguably the most competitive event of the day, with sixteen athletes entered. Austin Stoner and Alex Whittaker competed hard in the first heat, but it was the second heat that really left the crowd in awe. The field went out hard, coming through the first lap in 28 seconds, and never really slowed down. Trevor Reinhart bravely moved up into second with three laps to go, only to be overtaken by training partners Will Laird and Allen Siegler as they chased down Princeton's Sam Ellis. Though Siegler looked at one point to be closing the gap, Ellis responded, crossing the line in a new facility record of 2.22.26. Siegler missed out on the school record by just half a second, running a new PR of 2.23.12, while Laird took a full three seconds off his PR to finish third in 2.24.36. Reinhart rounded out the leading pack in 2.26.15, finishing sixth. All three will surely go in search of the four-minute mark at Boston University next weekend.
And yet the drama was just beginning for the crowd in Coxe Cage. As the sunset streamed in, the sprinters once again lined up, this time for the 200m. Across several heats, the Bulldogs put on a demonstration in running very quickly around an oval. Charles and Zuccaro both ran 21.83s, Vincent Vaughns closed out his last race in the Cage in style, finishing second in 21.54s, but it was Woods who once again stole the spotlight in the final heat, lowering his school record – set just a fortnight ago – by 0.06 seconds by running 21.33s.
Just as they did in the mile, Princeton entered several athletes into the 3000m. The Bulldog pack stayed relaxed through a rapid first two kilometers. As the Tigers continued to put the pressure on, the group was gradually strung out. Charlie Gardner, digging deep, held on to the bell and closed strongly to run a new eight-second PR of 8.16.83; first years Stephen Moody and Henry Saul worked well together to finish strongly in new PRs of 8.26.45 and 8.27.76 respectively, with Patrick Perry close behind in 8.28.75.
Going into the relays, the overall positions in the meet were decided, taking the pressure off and providing the opportunity to put on a show. The 4x800m squad of Siegler, Laird, Wyman and Dahl did just that, leading throughout, with Dahl closing the last leg in 1.52.77 to take the win. It was then the turn of the 4x400m team of Macauley, Zuccaro, Colbert and Sei. In a far closer race, the lead changed between the Bulldogs and Harvard almost every lap until a poor exchange from the Crimson gave Sei breathing room to finish the meet in style.
The Bulldogs will next race in the Valentine Invitational at Boston University next week where they will look to continue improving on their performances in order to place into the fastest heats at the Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Championships at Cornell University in three weeks' time.
