2006 Outdoor Track and Field News

NEWS UPDATE (5/26/06)

Congratulations KMoore and Keelin Godsey, both All-Americans at NCAA DIII Nationals

Keelin Godsey now has 15 All-American titles to his name, the most recent being a 4th place finish in the discus on Thursday and a win in the hammer throw this afternoon at DIII Nationals in Lisle, Illinois. Keelin threw 144-7 in the discus and broke her own NCAA Division III record in the hammer with a throw of 206-5, nearly 11 feet farther than his record from last year's cometition (195-4). Obviously, this was a new school record as well, but it's amazing how minor a school record seems while winning National Championship titles. Keelin's closest competitor in the hammer was 14 feet behind in 191-10. Keelin will compete in the shot put on Saturday, wearing the Bates uniform for the final time.

And how about KMoore huh?! Despite falling flat on her face while going over a water barrier, Kathryn Moore still managed to finish in 8th place, grabbing the last All-American position in the 3000m  steeplechase with a PR and new school record time of 10:49.46 (0.78 seconds faster than her previous record). "That was one of the most incredible, toughest races I've ever seen someone run," said Bates coach Jay Hartshorn. KMoore, who went to Nationals last year in the same event, had a dominating season. She started off with a win in the steeplechase at the Tufts Invitational on April 1, qualifying for Nationals in the process by running 11:03. She competed at the prestigious Penn Relays for the first time and improved her PR to 10:50, nearly qualifying automatically for Nationals. At the DIII New England Championships, KMoore once again emerged victorious with a time in the 11 minute range, but still a great race. This All-American honor is a fitting culmination to a great season and it is exciting to think about what she can do next year as a senior in XC and the track seasons.

Results are posted here and will be updated throughout the weekend

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NEWS (5/25/06)

Joel Colony qualifies for Nationals, but will stay at Bates

Even though Joel Colony qualified for Nationals in the 400m Dash, he will remain at Bates for his induction into the Phi Beta Kappa honors society for his outstanding academic achievement over the past 4 years at Bates. Joel was needed near the back of the pack, and decided that he would rather attend the induction ceremony.

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NEWS UPDATE (5/25/06)

Miley leads Bates to an 8th place tie out of 54 teams at ECACs

Ok, so I apologize for not updating the site well the past 2 weeks, but life as a bio major is tough this time of year.

Anyway, last week Bates walked away from Springfield College with 29 points, good enough for an 8th place tie (along with RIT) out of 54 teams. The major highlight from the meet was John Miley's 2nd place performance in the decathlon, provisionally qualifying for Nationals with 6,010 points. This marked a huge PR for John, who, fitting in this meet between a 3 night run of his directorial debut of A Midsummer Night's Dream, has had an intense week.

Matt Capone finished 19th in the 100m Dash with a time of 11.26 in a competitive 35 man field.

Dan Johnson, while hitting one of the barriers, still managed to finish 6th in the steeplechase and score 2 points with a time of 9:42. While this was nowhere near where Dan wanted to be, he has had an exceptional 4 years at Bates, the highlight being, of course, with his All American 13th place performance at XC Nationals last fall.

Biggart ended his collegiate career by finishing 9th in the 10k, battling it out for a time of 33:52. The 10k has always been a challenging even for Biggart, and his determination to come to this meet and fight for one more opportunity demonstrates the attitude Biggart has brought with him to every meet for the past 4 years.

CJ Murray had a rough end to his season, finishing 26th in the 1500 with a time of 4:15. While he was not pleased with that time, he did run 4:02 as a freshman, which shows huge potential for future track seasons, and even cross country in the fall. CJ ran 15:55 for the 5k at the first meet at Tufts, so next fall will certainly be interesting.

Coming off his win at Open New Englands the week before, Joel Colony finished 3rd in the 400m with a time of 48.79. Teammate Sam Thomas was right behind in 7th place out of 28 with a time of 49.44.

Andrew Tibbetts finished 24th in the 400m Hurdles with a mark of 58.54.

In the weight events, Noah Gauthier finished in 7th place in the Hammer Throw out of 22 athletes, with a toss of 172-04. Matt Lopez was behind in 12th place with 157-10. Noah was 5th in the shot put in 49-11.25

In the triple jump Emmanuel Drabo finished 14th with a leap of 43-03.75.

Finally, the 4 x 400 team of Sam Murphy, Matt Capone, Sam Thomas, and Joel Colony finished 4th out of 19 teams with a time of 3:19.94, 2 seconds behind NESCAC rival Williams, who won the event.

Final Results are posted here

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NEWS (5/13/06)

Bates finishes 11th (tie with BU) out of 36 at Open New Englands

Bates tied with BU today for 11th place at the Open New England Championships hosted by MIT. Big performances for Bates included Joel Colony's win in the 400 on Friday with a PR of 48.19. The 4 x 400 team of Andrew Tibbetts, Sam Thomas, Matt Capone, and Colony finished 2nd in the pouring rain today, winning the fast heat, but finishing second to Middlebury who ran in the slow heat. The team ran the 2nd fastest time they have run all season in the pouring rain: 3:20.0. More news to come later.

For now, results are posted here.

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NEWS (5/7/06)

Bates finishes 4th out of 26 teams at New England DIII Championships

Despite the losses of Dan Johnson (who was held out the steeple and 800 due to a stomach virus) and Adam Macbeth (whose hamstring injury held him out of the 110 and 400 hurdles, 4 x 400, and 4 x 100), Bates finished 4th out of 26 teams at the conclusion of yesterday's meet at Springfield College. Bates earned 59.50 points. Third place MIT earned 64, Tufts was second with 64.50, and Williams was first with 153.

Joel Colony and Matt Capone took fourth and fifth respectively in the 100m Dash posting times of 10.97 and 11.10. Colony was just edged out by Williams' John Symanksi who also ran 10.97. Colony made it up in the 200, where he finished 2nd out of 17 with a time of 22.23. Capone was 5th with 22.42, continuing his trend of recording excellent times this season.

Sam Thomas was 2nd in the 400m dash with a PR of 49.07, edging out in-state competitor Jimmy Sawyer (49.12) of USM.

Bates, once again, held out a 4 x 100m relay team, but finished 2nd in the 4 x 400. The race was once again between Williams and Bates, though this time, unlike last week's NESCAC race, Williams had the clear advantage the entire race and Bates was unable to make up the difference. Williams ran 3:19.35 and Bates ran 3:21.94 with Eastern Connecticut a close third in 3:21.99. A sharp wind that picked up along the backstretch right before the event made the times slower, but it was clear from the looks on the runners' faces that the effort was all there.

For the most part, the distance runners did not run well. CJ Murray had the most impressive performance, running a 4:04 1500, his second best mark in the event. The fast race was won in 3:52 and seven other runners finished under 4 minutes. On Friday night, Biggart and Sauce ran the 10k. Biggart was 10th in 34:36 and Sauce was 13th in 35:02. Percy and Stompy competed in the steeple yesterday. Percy only ran 10:15, never really being in the race, and Stompy took a spill in the water pit halfway through and he ended up running 10:34. Once again, Brian Murtagh, the freshman from Conn College, won the race as he did last week at NESCACs. Dunlap was in the first heat of the 5k and ran 15:58, which although is a respectable time, was about 30 seconds off where he wanted to be in this race.

In the field events, Jerome Bennett finished 4th with a jump of 13-03.00, tying with Middlebury's Pat Sedney. Drabo took sixth in the triple jump with a leap of 44-06.00. In the shot put, Noah Gauthier threw 51-11.75, good enough for fourth place, and right behind Williams' throwing star Dan Austin, who won the discus yesterday. Noah finished 9th in that event with a throw of 135-09.

Bates will travel to MIT next weekend for the Open New England Championships.

Results from yesterday can be found as follows:

Decathlon results here

Friday Final Results here

Saturday Running events here, Saturday Field events here

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NEWS (5/5/06)

Happy 20th Birthday Matt Dunlap, and oh yeah, DIII Update

John Miley finished 3rd in the decathlon and Andrew Tibbetts finished 5th in the same event in the second day of today's New England Division III Championships held at Springfield College.

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NEWS (5/2/06)

Updated Photo Page

Photo albums have been posted from the Bates Invitational (courtesy of Stuart Turner) and NESCAC meets, as well as from the Tufts Invitational indoors (courtesy of Stuart Turner) and videos of the Bates Invite steeplechase (Stompy's inaugural steeple) are posted. Watch the start of an incredible season for Stompy that ultimately led to his qualifying for DIII New Englands. 

Joe Gromelski '74 was at the NESCAC meet on Saturday at Bowdoin and took many fantastic photos, so be sure to check them out.

Click here for a quick link to the photo page

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NEWS (4/29/06)

Bates finishes 4th at NESCAC Championships

Bates finished fourth today at NESCACs, hosted by Bowdoin College 20 minutes away. The final team placements were the same as last year up through four: Williams, Tufts, Middlebury, and Bates. Highlights included the 4 x 400m team's victory (Sam Murphy, Matt Capone, Sam Thomas, Joel Colony) over Williams. Bates ran 3:18.18 versus Williams' 3:18.49. A longer story will follow tomorrow, but until it is posted, here are the results from the meet.

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NEWS (4/28/06)

Moore, Godsey Shine at Penn Relays

Kathryn Moore '07 and Keelin Godsey '06, two members of the womens' team, just returned back from the Penn Relays with outstanding performances to their credit.

Keelin placed second in the Championships Section of the Hammer Throw at the Penn Relays this morning.  Keelin threw 205-4 (62.16)  That is an automatic qualifying mark for the Senior National Championships of the United States to be held this summer.  A Penn State thrower was first at 213, 3rd went to thrower from the University of Arkansas, 4th St Johns University, 5th Auburn University and 6th to Syaracuse. In the shot, Keelin was 3rd out of 28 competitors, throwing 46-05.50.

KMoore finished 9th out of 20 in the College Women 3,000m Steeplechase, running a 13 second lifetime PR of 10:50.24, a time that would qualify her for the Men's NESCAC steeple. KMoore's pre-race goal was to run 10:50, which she did - a huge acomplishment. KMoore qualified provisionally for DIII Nationals in her first meet at Tufts by running 11:03 (11:20 qualifies provisionally), and 10:48 qualifies automatically, so she can feel confident about making the trip out to the Mid West later in the season.

Keelin's Hammer results can be found here, and his Shot results are posted here.

KMoore's Steeple results can be found here.

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NEWS (4/22/06)

Bates wins State of Maine Championships!

It all came down the final event - the 4 x 400m relay where Bates was up by 1 point on Bowdoin - and we managed to pull it out and take back the Championship trophy to Lewiston today.

Things were looking bleak when leadoff leg Adam Macbeth pulled his hamstring at the start of the 4 x 100m relay, dropping out, and not competing in the 110m hurdles or 400m hurdles, but a strong team effort made the difference. At the end of the day, Joel Colony walked away with the Best in Track MVP award, and Noah Gauthier took home the Best in Field MVP award, just how it was indoors.

In the 10k, Dunlap finished 5th out of 10, running a lifetime PR of 33:47 and aDIII qualifying time. Dillon Tung had a huge day running finishing 6th right behind Dunlap in 33:50 as a freshman and qualifying for DIIIs. Dillon looked strong the whole race and kept moving out, culminating in his outkicking a USM guy to get the final scoring place. Tim McCall had a PR of 35:26 (about a minute better than 3 weeks ago when he last ran the event), qualifying for NESCACs.

Andrew Percy won with a lifetime PR of 10:05 and Stompy was 2nd with a lifetime PR and DIII qualifying time of 10:12. This was a weird event because Percy and Stomp were the only 2 athletes in the race. For some odd reason no other team put a single guy in the steeple. This certainly helped offset Macbeth's injury.

Dan Johnson won in 4:03.16, beating Owen McKenna from Bowdoin (4:03.44) in a race all the way to the finish line. CJ Murray ran 4:07, having taken the lead for the first two laps. No one wanted to take the lead and the first quarter was about 70, the 800 was about 2:18, and then it picked up. Weird race.

Joel Colony took first in the 100m Dash with a time of 11.07 and Matt Capone took second in 11.27.

Sam Thomas won the 400m Dash in 48.91, beating USM standout freshman Jimmy Sawyer (49.42) with a great kick starting from the last 200m. Also great in this race was Sam Murphy, who finished in the scoring sixth place and ran a lifetime PR of 51.28.

 The 800m didn't go particularly well for us. Mike Watson was seventh in 2:02, Chris McGuire ran 2:05, Percy ran 2:06 off the steeplechase, and Ryan Dean ran a lifetime PR of 2:07. That was a phenomenal performance from Ryan. CJ would prefer it if we didn't mention his time here on the site.

In the 400m Hurdles Tibbetts finished 3rd in 59.33.

Next up for the running events was the 200m Dash, where Colony took first place again with a time of 22.06, and just like in the 100, Capone took second in 22.54.

Little Dan came back in the 5k after winning the 1500 and finished 3rd in the race, running 15:20, just 7 seconds behind Bowdoin's Nate Krah and 5 seconds behind Colby's Dan Vassallo (both fresh). Biggart finished in sixth place running 16:00. Harrison Little had a lifetime PR in the event, finishing 7th in 16:07, a MERE 7 seconds behind BIGGART (who had predicted that Radio wouldn't break 16:20 after spending the past week in Aruba on a family vacation).

The 4 x 400m was the final event of the meet. Watson led off in 52.3, a great effort and a great time for a distance runner but but Bates in last place (a function of not being a sprinter). Capone took over and ran like a bat out of hell, going from dead last to dead first. He gave the baton to Sam Thomas who maintained the lead and by the time Joel anchored the race was won. Joel crossed the line in 3:21.96, 3 seconds ahead of second place Colby. It was a pretty exciting event.

The field events were equally impressive. Macbeth managed to win the Long Jump before he got hurt, jumping 6.77m. Drabo was 3rd in 6.32m, and Graham was 4th in 5.92m. Drabo came back in the Triple Jump to win with a broken foot, recording 13.10m. Graham pulled out an impressive third place, jumping 46.37m. Tibbetts rounded out the scoring with a leap of 41.80m.

Tibbetts also won the high jump in an 8 man field with a mark of 6-00.00. John Miley was in a 5 way tie for second with a jump of 5-10.00

The throws performed well too. In the Hammer Throw, Noah was second in 50.66m, behind Colby and Bowdoin standouts Jason Foster and Alex Linhart. Matt Lopez was fourth with 48.03m. Graham took sixth with 39.43m. In the Shot, Noah won with 14.96m, followed by Lopez in fifth place with 12.78m. Noah came back with another win in the Discus, throwing 44.49m, a little under a foot farther than Colby's Foster. Lopez was fifth again with 37.56m.

In the Javelin, Miley posted a 3rd place performance with a throw of 47.37m. Tibbetts finished 6th with 41.80m.

Finally, in the Pole Vault, Tibbetts finished 5th with a vault of 10-00.00.

Overall team scores were Bates (204), Bowdoin (199.50), Colby (99), and USM (93.50).

Results posted here

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NEWS (4/17/06)

Bates Alums Fare Well in Boston Marathon; Anderson 53rd, Hammond 124th

Joel Anderson '05 finished in 53rd place out of 20,089 today in the Boston Marathon, running a PR of 2:31:35. Joel averaged 5:47 per mile over the 26.2 mile course. He split 17:03 for the 5k, 34:12 for the 10k, 1:08:59 through 20k, and 1:12:45 at the halfway point.

Paul Hammond '82 finished in 124th place in 2:38:55 - pretty impressive for a 46 year old. Paul was 16th in the Masters (40-49) age division, which consisted of 6,997 runners. He averaged 6:04 per mile and split 17:00 through the 5k, 34:29 through the 10k, 1:11:16 for the 20k, and 1:15:22 through the half.

Nic Hansen '05 finished in 1,214th place with a time of 3:01:45 (6:56 per mile). Nic ran 2:48 in the Philadelphia Marathon a couple months ago, but the Boston course is more challenging, so not too bad at all. Nic split 18:48 for the 5k, 37:41 for the 10k, 1:16:22 through 20k, and 1:20:42 for the half.

Trent Lierman '04 finished in 1,457th place in 3:04:13, averaging 7:02 per mile. Trent split 21:24 through the 5k, 42:03 through the 10k, 1:24:08 through the 20k, and 1:28:45 through the half.

These four runners had a crowd of 9 Bates distance runners cheering them on at the entrance to Wellesley College at the 20k mark in the course. The one thing we forgot in all our organization was a camera, so we couldn't get any photos or video clips, but it was still great to see those guys. The whole group met up later that night in Cambridge, Mass where Matt "Shelly" Daly '05 lives.

Full results of the Boston Marathon have been posted here.

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    NEWS (4/15/06)

Bates takes second in home meet

Bates was second today to MIT in the meet in Lewiston consisting of Bates, MIT, Colby, and University of Southern Maine. MIT won with 244 points, Bates was 2nd with 208, USM followed with 104 and finally Colby with 89. Bates had nine wins overall.

Things started off well, with Little Dan taking the win in the steeplechase with a DIII qualifying time and lifetime PR of 9:37. Stompy, however, is the real story of the race and probably the entire meet. Stomp had had some problems in practice yesterday going over the water pit, and when he fell after the first water pit in today's race, our fears for his life weren't dispelled. Barring that first incident, however, Stompy had a great race, finishing in "not last" place and running 10:32, a NESCAC qualifying time. That's pretty damn good, considering his predicted times ranged from 11:15-13:20. That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and is bound to become legendary: the time that Stompy ran the steeplechase.

The 4 x 100 was next, which Bates's team easily won in 43.02. The team consisted of Macbeth, Colony, Capone, and Sam Thomas. MIT was 2nd in the event with 44.58.

The 1500 was one of the most stacked races of the day, with 17 runners competing, and CJ Murray won the whole thing. MIT's Fivos Constantinou went out in the lead for the first 800 in 2:10, at which point Andrew Percy took over for about 150 meters. With 600 meters to go CJ and a pack of MIT and USM guys moved up and from then on it was a race to the finish line, ending with CJ winning in 4:04.58, USM's Curtis Wheeler 2nd in 4:04.92, and Fivos in 3rd with 4:05.41. Biggart was 7th in 4:09, Percy was 10th in 4:10, and Watson was 13th in 4:15. All the Bates guys had lifetime PRs in the event.

Macbeth took a convincing win in the 110m hurdles, posting a time of 15.29. Tibbetts was 4th in  16.78, the beginning of what turned out to be a great day for Tibbetts who doubled back with a 2nd place performance in the 400m hurdles.

Joel Colony took the 400 with an incredible time of 48.80. His competition came from freshman in-state standout Jimmy Sawyer from USM who ran 48.98. Stu Foster was 12th in 57.39 and Tim Natriello was 13th in 57.70.

In the 100m dash, Capone made his season debut, finishing in 2nd place with a time of 11.30, 6 one hundredths of a second behind overall winner David Blau of MIT. Jerome Bennett ran the first 100m race of his life, finishing in 7th place with a time of 11.82.

The 800 was another stacked middle distance event. And once again Bates emerged victorious with a win by Sam Thomas. Sam has been training a bit for the 800, doing some middle distance workouts under the direction of Todd, and he won today in 1:59, about a full second ahead of 2nd place finisher Aron Walker of MIT. There were 2 heats in the race, and in the first heat Biggart ran 2:06, good enough for 17th overall and a time of 2:06. Chris McGuire followed with a time of 2:08. In the second heat, aside from Sam, Watson had a "miraculous performance" as he called it, having been somewhat disappointed in the 1500 45 minutes earlier. Watson ran 2:00, a damn impressive performance. CJ was the next Bates runner with 2:03, followed by Percy with 2:04.

The 400m hurdles was a great event for Bates. Macbeth won in 56.59, but was closely followed by Tibbetts who ran 57.39. This puts Tibbetts fairly high up on Bates' top ten all time list. Sam Murphy was 3rd in 1:00:04.

In the 200, Joel Colony took another win with a time of 22.12, a fine opening mark. Capone was 3rd with a time of 22.86.

The rain finally rolled in again for the 5000, which just made Alex Whalen's day. For the second meet in a row Whalen was privelaged enough to race in the rain, and for the second meet in a row Whalen had to watch the sky clear up, the sun come out, and the sweatshirts removed immediately after his race. Dunlap was 5th in the 15 man field, running a 17 second lifetime PR of 15:43. Whalen was 8th in 16:35. Tim McCall had a phenomenal race, and arguably could have received the Honor Baton (which ended up being given to the captains, who gave it to Keelin Godsey). Tim ran 17:04, a solid 35 seconds faster than his previous lifetime PR, which occurred not in any collegiate track race but in a high school cross country race. Tim was feeling pretty good after. Will Viti ran the first 5k of his life, finishing in 17:24, and Tom Burian ran 17:57.

Bates won the 4 x 400 in 3:23, 2 seconds in front of second place MIT. The team consisted of the winning 4 x 100 team of Macbeth, Colony, Capone, and Thomas.

The field events did well too. Matt Lopez, Noah Gauthier, and Graham Raymon took 3rd, 4th, and 5th respectively in the hammer throw with tosses of 48.20m, 48.03m, and 40.29m respectively. In the shot put, Noah was 2nd behind National Champion Uzoma Orji of MIT with a throw of 15.15m. Lopez was 4th with 12.69m, John Miley was 5th with 11.78, and Graham was 7th with 10.09m. In the discus Noah was 3rd with 39.65m, Lopez was 5th with 38.77, and John Miley was 7th with 35.68m. Finally, in the javelin, Tibbetts was 2nd with 44.68m, and Miley was 3rd with 43.72m.

The jumping events performed well. In the pole vault, Jerome Bennett cleared 14-00 for the first time in competition, and took the win as well. He tried to clear 14-6, but didn't quite have it today. Tibbetts was 3rd in the high jump with a leap of 1.78m. Drabo, we just learned yesterday, has a stress fracture in his leg, so he did not compete today. Luckily Graham was there to compete in the Long Jump, finishing 4th in 5.80m.

Bates will compete at the State Championships next week, hosted by Colby College. The main goal will be to be to win the meet, something that Bowdoin has managed to do for the past 2 running seasons this year.

Full Results of today's meet are posted here.

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NEWS (4/10/06)

Runners Compete in Morgan McDuffee Race; 4 members of Class of '05 honored at All Sports Banquet 

Matt Dunlap won the 4th edition of Morgan's Run yesterday, a memorial 5k walk and run in honor of lacrosse captain Morgan McDuffee '01 who was murdered 2 months before his senior year. For the first time in all 4 years, the weather was actually beautiful and 462 runner participated in the event. A large number of Bates students and student-athletes ran in the race. This race was particularly significant since it was the first time that no current Bates students attended Bates at the same time as McDuffee. The participation of yesterday's race, therefore, largely determined whether or not the organizers feel they can continue the event in future years. Just a guess, but I think they'll do it again.

Dunlap ran 16:47 for the course, which is essentially a slightly different version of our own run, JV. Andrew Percy was 3rd with 17:10, Alex Whalen was 6th with 18:27, Matt Biggart was 7th with 18:48, Dillon Tung was 14th with 19:00, and CJ Murray was 20th with 19:18. Mike Watson was unregistered, but ran a PR of 18:25 (he had never raced a 5k before yesterday, having played soccer all through high school and having taken a wrong turn at NESCACs, which should have been a 5k but became a 6k for Watson). So the distance crew was fairly well represented in the race. Aside from Dunlap and Percy, who were doing more of a tempo effort, the other guys just ran a "steady state" type run. At the end of the race, as it finished along Campus Avenue and finally on Central Avenue next to the Grey Cage, it was down to Dunlap and 44 year old Dan Dearing. With 150m to go, Dunlap kicked it in and took the win.

Full results of yesterday's race results can be found here.

In other news, 4 track and field athletes from the Class of 2005 received senior citations last night at the All Sports Banquet. A senior citation is the highest honor any student athlete can receive from Bates, and there have never been any more track and field athletes represented than the four that were honored last night. The award acknowledges 4-8 outstanding members of the class who demonstrated excellence in the sport, above and beyond the call of duty. Recipients are presented, in front of all the Bates student athletes, a plaque with their photo and a summary of their accomplishments. Recipients from the track team were Joel Anderson, Scott Cooper, Dustin Gauthier, and Joe Northrup. Northrup was not able to attend the dinner, but Joel, Coop, and Duddy were there. It was great to see all of them. In addition, Dan Johnson and Adam Macbeth were honored for their All American honors they received earlier in the year.

The Bobcats are finishing up their final exams now, which end on Tuesday, and are gearing up for the Bates Decathlon on Saturday.

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NEWS (4/1/06)

Bates finishes 2nd out of 17 at Tufts' Snowflake Invitational

Bates finished 2^nd out of 17 teams today at Tufts University’s Snowflake Invitational. Dartmouth College won the meet with 116 points, beating Bates' 111.5 and Tufts' 107.5. Tufts delivered all it promised, except the snowflakes. For the first six hours of the Invitational it seemed like the meteorologists’ forecast of heavy rain, thunder, and sixty degrees was a well organized April Fool’s joke. Until the start of the 200m dash – the third to last event – the weather crews could not have been more wrong. The Bobcats were treated to 75 degrees, blue skies, and no wind for the majority of an overall great day for the program. The Bobcats were well represented in all event areas. 

The 10,000m guys got things off to a good start. Biggart, Dunlap, Stompy, T-Unit, and Big T were all entered in the 9 man field, resulting in a long garnet streak around the track. A Bridgewater State runner broke away early on and never relinquished, so the real race was back among the Bates guys for the most part. For the first 2 miles, Biggart, Dunlap, and Stompy stuck together, trading places the whole way.  It was the first 10k of Unit’s life, and he is looking forward to running the event again with hopes of qualifying for NESCACs. Biggart was 2nd in 33:53, Dunlap was 3rd in 34:10, Stompy was 4th in 34:48, Tim was 6th in 36:21, and Tom was 8th in 37:34. Every 10k participant, therefore, scored in the meet as scoring went 8 deep.

Joel Colony was 2nd in the 100m Dash finals, finishing in 11.22. In the 200, Joel was 3rd behind two Dartmouth guys, and he ran 22.58. Sam Thomas was 8th (won his heat), running 23.29. Capone brought it home for the Bobcats in 11th place out of 37, running 23.75. Thomas was 5th in the 400m with a time of 49.65 - a fantastic season opener.

The rest of the distance guys held up their end of the bargain as well. In the 3000m steeplechase, both Percy and Mia raced - it was Mia's first time (he's been doing a lot of innovative stuff, huh - like going to Nats, etc). Percy was 2nd in the 7 man field with a time of 10:18. Not his best effort, but not a bad opener. Mia was 6th and ran 10:58, just 5 seconds shy of qualifying for NESCACs in an event he had never run! In the 800, Dan Johnson finished 2nd after having run the 1500 already, and he ran 1:59.45. Tim Natriello accomplished one of his main goals - breaking 2:10 - by running 2:09.59. Stu Foster ran 2:12 and rookie Ryan Dean was right behind in 2:13. Will Viti had been in the race, but pulled his hamstring after the first lap and had to drop out. In the 1500, Dan finished 2nd with a time of 4:06 behind Joel Sunshine of Brandeis who ran 4:01. In the same event, Harrison Little ran 4:19.94, qualifying for NESCACs by a whopping four-one-hundredths of a second. Viti was 27th in 4:37, and Chris McGuire was 29th in 4:40. By the time the 5k rolled around the rain had been coming down for a couple events and it was pretty chilly. Whalen was NOT a happy camper. CJ Murray ended up running phenomenally, despite having contracted the Bates Plague early in the week. CJ finished 3rd out of 20 and broke 16 for the first time by running 15:55. Dillon Tung was 10th for us in 16:44.36 and Whalen crossed at almost the exact same time in 11th in 16:44.37.
 

Bates didn't run a 4 x 100m relay this week, but the 4 x 400m relay came in 2nd out of 10 with a time of 3:27.33, finishing 1 second behind Tufts' A team. Bates threw together a B team as well, consisting of Mike Watson, McGuire, Ryan Dean, and Percy. They finished 7th in 3:46.
 

The field event athletes shined as well. Andrew Tibbetts was 5th out of 15 in the high jump, equaling his PR with a jump of 6-00.00. Jerome was 4th out of 10 in the pole vault, clearing 13-00.00, but falling just shy of 13-6 - his indoor PR. Drabo and Graham Raymond competed in the Long Jump, finishing 14th and 25th respectively out of 31 and jumping 6.02m and 5.77m respectively. Drabo came back to take second out of 18 in the Triple Jump with a leap of 13.42m.

Noah Gauthier was 3rd out of 19 in the shot put with a toss of 14.21m. Matt Lopez was 9th with 12.06m and Graham was 16th with 10.61m. In the discus, Lopez was 4th out of 29 in 38.29, Noah was 10th in 34.61, and Graham was 21st in 28.49. Noah and Lopez finished 4th and 5th respectively in the hammer throw with tosses of 47.65 and 44.98m respectively. In the javelin, John Miley finished 10th out of 23 with a throw of 42.87m.

All in all, Coach Fresh was pleased with the day since we finished 2nd out of 17 without a single overall winner. We had 7 second place finishes and many third place finishes. So not a bad day.

Visit the Photos/Video section or click here to see a whole bunch of video clips taken from today's meet. Full results can also be found here.