HANOVER, N.H. – The Yale men's track and field team kicked off competition at the Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Championships on Saturday. As usual, after an impressive season of racing so far, athletes are expected to step up their game for the most competitive meet of the season, in which they get to face off against all of Yale's closest rivals. As part of a two-day meet, Saturday's action consisted of some exciting finals in the field events as well as some fiercely contested heats on the track. 

The day began for Yale in the field events, with first year Isiah Udofia leaping to a collegiate PR of 6.34m in his first time competing at Heps. The Bulldogs' throws squad continued to impress, with junior Matt Appel launching a colossal throw of 18.35m to set a new Yale school record on his way to second in the shot put. He put together a consistent set of throws in which all six of his throws were further than that of the third placer. Behind him, first year Nolan Recker also PR'd in style with a 15.97m throw to place 12th, just ahead of Chris Ward's 15.73m effort. Appel now turns his attention to tomorrow's weight throw competition, where he'll look to go one better. 

On the track, sophomore Jacob Kao led the way for Yale in the 60m and the 200m, clocking 7.03 and 22.14 respectively to narrowly miss qualification for the final in both events. Also competing in the 60m were Kit Colson and Justin Yazdi, while James Grindle and Jeamy Williams repped 'the Y' over 200m. In the 400m, Aaron Miller came agonizingly close to the last qualification spot for Sunday's final, missing out by just 0.08 seconds. Expect him to be back with a vengeance in the relays Sunday. His training partner Simon Jupp had earlier competed well in his first 500m of the season, clocking 1:06.54. It's worth noting that Dartmouth's notorious flat track, which the Bulldogs were lucky enough to experience earlier in the year at the Yale-Dartmouth-Columbia tri-meet, makes it notably tougher for the athletes to clock fast times. 

Over the middle distance events, junior Drake Prince secured finals qualification in style thanks to a ferocious mid-race move in his 800m heat, which he won convincingly in 1:51.65 to clock the fastest time of the day. Thomas Cirrito's attempt to join him in the final came up just short, as he ran 1:55.21 in his first race back after injury. Over the 1000m, Calvin Katz and Elon Abergel battled well against some tough competition. Earlier, Winslow Atkeson had run a phenomenal 4:08.14 in the mile to secure qualification for Sunday's final. Teammates Liam Garrett and Austin Montini competed well but came up just short in their efforts to join him. Garrett's British compatriot Leo Brewer closed the day out for the Bulldogs with a scintillating 8:12.80 clocking over 3000m, which was good enough for seventh place in a high-quality field. Braden King, Martin Riddell and Alex Mader all impressed close behind him.

The Bulldogs finish the day sixth place in the team standings, ready to push on further up the leaderboard Sunday.