Men's Track garners top marks at Valentine Invitational
Macklin Chaffee '09
During the final day of competition at Boston University’s Valentine Invitational, members of the Williams men’s Track & Field team went head-to-head against some of the best athletes in the northeast. The meet, held at BU’s renowned banked track, featured both collegiate and professional athletes in a long day of competition that didn’t finish until after 10 o’clock at night.
The success that the women’s track team experienced Saturday night carried over to the men’s team as three NCAA provisional qualifying marks were hit. Senior Andrew Arons moved up in distance the 400 meter dash, running 49.09 seconds, and freshman Taylor Fitzgerald just missed the qualifying mark of 49.10. His time of 49.45 was just a little over a quarter of a second too slow to meet the provo time.
In the mile run, junior Mack Chaffee ran without a shoe for almost the entire race. After a little more than one lap around the track, his shoe came off - leaving him with the option of dropping out, or continuing on with the risk of bruising his foot or getting spiked by another runner’s race shoes. Luckily, he came through unscathed in an NCAA provisional qualifying time of 4:14.83. Fellow mid-distance runner Chris Beeler just missed qualifying provisionally in the 800 meter run. His time of 1:54.46 was just over the qualifying standard by .06 seconds. His finish is made remarkable by the fact that this was only his second race back this season after dealing with minor injuries early on. Sophomore Edgar Kosgey finished less than a second behind Beeler, crossing the line in 1:55.34.
The long distance races featured a slew of fast times as seniors Grant Burgess and Morgan Seybert worked together with sophomore Corey Watts in the 3000 meter run. Burgess was first across the line in a quick 8:39.95 as Seybert and Watts finished within a half second of each other, 8:43.23 and 8:43.65, respectively. All three of them qualified for both the Division III New England and ECAC championship races. Senior Jim Clayton, running late into the night, slipped under the Division III New England qualifying mark of 15:40 with his 5000 meter run time of 15:36.05.
The 4x400 meter relay team of Arons, Fitzgerald, Matt Desir '08 and Deividas Seferis ’08 came together to race well under the NCAA provisional qualifying mark of 3:19.7. Their finishing time of 3:17.79 was less than three seconds off the automatic qualifying time of 3:15.1.
The Ephs race again next weekend at Tufts University as they begin to sharpen up for the post-seasons championship races.
