NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The Cornell track teams competed at the Outdoor Heps this weekend, hosted by Yale, and returned to Ithaca with second place team finishes on both the men's and women's sides.  Despite facing adversity, both the men and the women competed with great heart and made the team standings very close in the meet's final events as the Princeton Tigers held on to victory. 

The Cornell men made up a deficit of more than 70 points (even with defending 100/200 champ Bruno Hortelano-Roig on the sidelines with an injury sustained on Saturday) on the second day to finish only 11 points behind Princeton. The quality of the Cornell performances across the board were remarkable with the Cornell men producing an amazing 43 IC4A qualifiers, five event wins and eight second place finishes along with eight changes to the school all-time top 10 lists to score 186 points, the most ever for a second place team at the outdoor Heps. In the men's meet, Cornell and Princeton again outscored the rest of the League combined as Brown claimed third with 76.

The Big Red men staged one of the most remarkable second day comebacks in recent meet history, pulling with seven points heading into the final two relays before just falling short. The seeds for the comeback were sown on Day One as the Big Red qualified a meet best 18 through to the finals and managed 17 day one points. The long jump was a source of 12 of those points as the Big Red placed 3-4-5 behind junior Chase Aaronson (3rd, 24-0 3/4), freshman Hercules Stancil (4th, 23-11 1/2) and freshman Steven Bell (5th, 23-10 1/4). Junior Bob Belden placed sixth in the shot put at 53-5 1/2 to add another point to the Big Red ledger. And in the 10K, senior Nate Edeleman ran a tough race that was very slow and tactical for the first four miles and crossed the line in 30:32.98. Classmate Drew Hart was ninth in 30:59.27.

It was the 18 qualifiers for Sunday that gave the Big Red a chance. In the 100, the Big Red advanced four although a hamstring problem for defending 100 and 200 champion Bruno Hortelano-Roig was a big blow. The 100 qualifiers were freshman Kinsley Ojukwu (10.81), sophomore Jedidiah Adarquah-Yiadom (10.90), Aaronson 910.83) and senior Andy Ahart (10.95). Hortelano-Roig managed ninth in 10.99 but was unable to continue the rest of the weekend. In the 200, freshman Justin McCollin ran 22.16 and senior Cody Boyd and Ojukwu both ran 21.78 to advance. Senior co-captain Cody Boyd (48.15) and junior Dan Thomas (48.20) both got through in the 400 while the 800 trio of sophomore Nick Wade (1:50.98), freshman Will Weinlandt (1:50.98) and freshman John Schilkowski (1:51.36) all advanced.  In the 110 hurdles, juniors Nick Huber (14.71) and Dan Hagberg (14.78) and sophomore Zach Zeller (15.30) qualified and in the 400 hurdles, juniors Ken McClain (52.57), Brian Freitas (52.81) and Huber (54.47) advanced forward.

Sunday got off to a tremendous start for Cornell as the 4X100 (despite the absence of usual anchor Hortelano-Roig) stepped up with a big win and the fifth best time in meet and school history. Aaronson, Adarquah-Yiadom, Ahart and senior co-captain Chris Tait crossed the line in 40.66, nearly half a second ahead of second. And Cornell got an inspired effort from senior co-captain Adrien Dannemiller in the next final on the track, the 3000 steeplechase. Leading from the gun, Dannemiller ran the second best time in school history (and the fourth best time in meet history), 8:42.14 and fought a memorable battle with the 2010 NCAA runner-up in the event, Donn Cabral of Princeton, who had won the 10K the night before. Cornell also came up big early on in the day in the high jump as junior Chris Arlinghaus placed second with a life-time best clearance of 6-11 1/2, #5 all-time at Cornell. Also scoring was Stancil, who was sixth and 6-5 Huber, who cleared 6-5 for sixth; Scott just missed scoring with a seventh place 6-3 1/2. Meanwhile, in the discus, Belden bounced back well from the shot put with a fourth place effort of 165-1 in the discus. The Big Red then got 19 big points behind the 1-2-6 finish of Hagberg (14.40, #7 all-time), Huber (14.47, #9 all-time) and Zeller (15.07) in the 110 hurdles. In the 400, Thomas placed fourth in 48.05, with Boyd just missing in on the scoring action with a seventh place run of 48.51.

It was in the next several events that the Princeton lead, which had ballooned to over seventy points, quickly began to shrink. Adarquah-Yiadom (10.73), Ojukwu (10.78) and Aaronson (10.85) went 2-4-5 in the 100 and then in the 800, Wade ran an inspired final 150 meters to nip Princeton's Russell Dinkins at the finish line to earn his first Heps title, running 1:50.15. Close behind was Schilkowski, who managed sixth in 1:52.01. The Big Red also got seventh place efforts in both events from Ahart (10.92 in the 100) and Weinlandt (1:55.59 in the 800). The 400 hurdles provided 22 more points as Freitas claimed his first Heps title with a run of 51.99 and McClain continued his late-season surge to place second in 52.49; do-it-all junior Huber was fourth in 53.68. The decathlon provided 16 more points as junior Josh Cusick was the Heps runner-up with 6,730 points (#3 all-time at Cornell), junior Vince Formica was third at 6,675 points (#4 all-time) and senior co-captain Alex Holcombe competed tough to get fifth at 6,291 points. And elsewhere in the field, the Big Red got a huge lift from the triple jump as the quartet of senior Gary Jones (50-6 3/4), Scottt (49-4 1/2), senior Julian Remouns (48-10 3/5) and Bell (48-5 1/4) went 1-2-3-6 to net 25 points. Cornell also tallied three points in the 200 as Boyd (22.01) and Ojukwu (22.24) were fifth and sixth. And even as Princeton's Mark Amirault claimed first in the 5000, the Big Red matched the Princeton 10-point tally with great finishes from Edelman (2nd, 14:14.43) and senior Matt De Silva (5th, 14:17.68) as Princeton led Cornell by only seven with the two relays remaining on the schedule.

The Big Red competed great in the final two events but Princeton was just a bit better, edging Cornell by a place in each relay. The 4X800 of Dannemiller (1:52.9), Thomas (1:52.4), Schilkowski (1:53.2) and Wade (1:50.0) placed fourth in 7:28.52, #7 all-time at Cornell and the fourth best in meet history. And the 4X400 closed out the meet with a fine second place effort of 3:13.83 as McClain (48.9), Boyd (48.9), Freitas (47.6) and Tait (48.3) gave a fine effort.

In addition to these scoring efforts, the Big Red had other good performances as well. Tait was 11th in the 200 at 22.27 and 9th in the 400 at 49.16, junior Steve Wexler was 13th in the 400 hurdles at 57.32, freshman Peter Roach was seventh in the vault at 15-3 while Huber cleared 14-9 for eighth, sophomore Jourdan White was seventh in the long jump at 23-2 3/4 and ninth in the high jump at 6-3 1/2, sophomore Bob Fiedler was seventh in the hammer at 172-10, and Hart was 21st in the 5000 at 15:09.92, a day after the 10K.

Congrats to the Princeton teams on an outstanding year and meet this weekend and congrats to the Cornell men and women for stepping up with terrific competitive efforts even as some top Big Red athletes were unable to have the opportunity due to injury. And thanks to all the Cornell alumni, family, friends and fans who were on hand in New Haven for a great weekend of competition.

Complete results can be found here:
Men:
http://www.lancertiming.com/results/spring11/hepsm.htm

There is archived video of all the races on Flotrack:
http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/238720-2011-Ivy-League-Heptagonal-Heps-Outdoor-Track-and-Field-Championships

Next up for the Big Red is the IC4A Championships, which will be held at Princeton on May 13-15.  After that is the First Round of the NCAA Championships – the Eastern site is in Bloomington, IN on May 26-28.