ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Cornell track and field teams closed out the indoor portion of their track season with very good showings at the Eastern Championships in Boston on Saturday and Sunday as the men tied for third at the IC4A Championships and the women placed fifth at the ECAC Championships. With over 80 Division I Eastern schools at these championships, the Big Red returned to Ithaca with 16 different scoring efforts and nearly 30 All-East performers.
The men had a very good meet to tie Liberty for third with 45.5 points, behind only team champion Albany (68.5) and George Mason (65) and finished as the top Ivy team. The Big Red had nine scoring efforts and 15 All-East honorees. Senior Rick Zamora scored the Big Red's first points on the weekend, earning a second place finish in the pole vault, clearing 16-0 3/4. Also on Saturday, the Big Red saw a slew of qualifiers through to the finals. Freshman
Nick Wade again bettered the NCAA Provisional standard in running 1:50.09 in the 800 to easily make the finals. In the 500, sophomore
Brian Freitas tied the school record of 63.28 but then was DQed for a tangle in the last lap. Classmate Ken McClain then came back in the next heat to better that school record by .01 running 63.27 to make the final. Also reaching the final was both the 4X400 (with an all-sophomore team of
Cody Boyd, Dan Thomas, Freitas and McClain running 3:14.01, at the time #10 in school history) and the 4X800 (made up of freshman
Andy Arnold, freshman
David McCuiston, freshman Will McFall and junior Tommy Roy running 7:37.85). Making it to the semi-finals were sophomores
Dan Hagberg (7.72 in the 55 hurdles) and
Chase Aaronson (6.42 in the 55 dash). And after day one, senior co-captain Josh Kirkpatrick led the heptathlon with a score of 2954 points.
Good things continued on Saturday for Cornell. Scoring early for Cornell was sophomore
Bob Belden, who placed 7th in the shot put with a heave of 54-8 1/4. On the track, freshman Wade ran very well to earn second, running 1:50.68 in the 800. McClain then broke the school record in the 500 for the second straight day, running a terrific 1:02.97 to place third. After a 6.37 in the 55 semi-finals, Aaronson upset pre-meet form charts in a big way with an outstanding 6.35 in the 55 final to place second and produce the third best 55 dash in school history. Also scoring individually was sophomore
Chris Arlinghaus, who was fourth in the high jump at 6-8 1/4 and Kirkpatrick, who closed out his second heptathlon in 7 days with 5,088 points for sixth. The 4X800, with Wade on the anchor, ran 7:31.87 for fifth, the third best indoor time in school history. And in the 4X400 the all-sophomore quartet of Boyd, Thomas, Freitas (47.3) and McClain (47.3) ran 3:12.37 to place seventh, the fourth best indoor time in school history.
Also competing for Cornell on the weekend was freshman
Jedidiah Adarquah-Yiadom (21st, 6.52) in the 55, Boyd (31st, 49.00) in the 400, freshman
Andy Arnold (18th, 4:09.99 - a big PR) in the mile, Hagberg (11th, 7.68) in the 55 hurdles, junior
Alex Holcombe (15th, 4,218 points) in the heptathlon and senior
Brad Bogdan (30th, 15:35.53) in the 5000.
In addition to the IC4A and ECAC meets, seniors
Duane Teixeira and
Gary Jones travelled to Virginia Tech and the more jumper-friendly facility there in search of NCAA qualifiers. Teixeira was third in the long jump at 24-6 1/4, and then came back to place sixth in the triple jump at 50-10 1/4, #5 all-time and an NCAA provisional qualifier. Jones placed ninth in 50-3 3/4, #8 all-time. And the event winner was Muhammad Halim '08, who reached 52-8 1/4.
Complete IC4A results are at:
http://www.lancertiming.com/results/winter10/ic4a.htm
With the indoor portion of the 2010 track campaign at an end for Cornell, the Big Red turns its attention to the outdoor part of the schedule. The annual spring break trip to California is up next as Cornell will compete at the UC Irvine Spring Break Invitational on Saturday, March 20 and then at the Cal State Fullerton Titan Twilight on Friday, March 26.
