Ephs Continue to Tune Up with Springfield Invitational

Complete Results

Springfield, MA-- There wasn't the excitement of last month's Division III Indoor Championships. The weather was nowhere near as nice as last week's University of Central Florida Invitational (it was quite cold, actually). Some of the team's top scorers opted to train through the meet. Closer inspection reveals that the national-caliber, and much talked about, 4 x 400 team of Fitzgerald, Seferis, Nagy, and Hoerman had been replaced by Eric Jonash, Isaac Nicholson, Pierre-Alexander Meloty-Kapella, and Tomas Kearney. But competition is competition, and the Springfield Invitational of April 4th was a great opportunity to raise the heart rate, get those competitive juices flowing, and take another step toward reclaiming the title of NESCAC Track & Field Champion.

Springfield College, the meet's host, won with a score of 227 points. Williams was second with 165 points. Middlebury, Amerst, and Stevens Institute rounded out the scoring with 101, 57, and 29 points, respectively.

Another caveat: winds howled down the backstretch of the track, and track times should be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, a number of athletes turned in solid performances which earned them qualifications in future races. Perhaps the top track performance of the day was authored by upstart freshman Viktor Nagy of Hungary. Nagy's time of 49.87 delivered a 2nd place performance (and 8 points for the Ephs) as well as NESCAC, Division III New Englands, and ECAC qualifying standards. Taylor Fitzgerald '11, a teammate of Nagy's on the 4 x 400 team, also accomplished a lot with his time of 50.43, earning a 3rd place finish and the same three qualification marks as Nagy.

Doubling in the 100 and 200, Pierre-Alexander Meloty-Kapella ended up being the high track scorer of the meet as his pair of third place finishes were worth 12 points. Having already notched the Division III New Englands qualifying standard last week in Florida, Kapella continues to tune up for bigger races later in the season.

Four distance runners also combated the win to secure a place in the Division III New Englands race. Freshman Anthony Raduazo produced a time of 15:30 in the 5000, good for a second place finish and just five seconds behind winner Will Yochum of Amherst. In addition, the 10,000, a mammoth 25 lap race, proved fruitful for the Ephs as Corey Watts '10, Ryan Ford '09, and Aaron Schwartz '09 finished 1st through 3rd, respectively, and all notched the DIII qualifying mark. For all three runners, though, much faster times are sure to come.

The highest overall scorer of the meet was none other than freshman Rusty Cowher, who tripled in the shot put, discus, and hammer throw, and finished no worse than 3rd in any of those events. Cowher actually grabbed the gold, the silver, and the bronze as 12.98 meters in the shot was good for 1st, 38.27 meters in the discus earned 2nd, and 40.47 meters in the hammer was good for 3rd. His hammer throw trailed teammate Matt Farley '11, who hurled the hammer 47.21 meters. Although this was shorter than his performance at the UCF meet, the fact that he threw more than 15% farther than the nearest competitor speaks more clearly to the quality of his meet as winds once again likely played a factor.

If Cowher was the man of the meet, Isaac Nicholson, sophomore, was a close second. After narrowly edging teammate Eric Johash in the high jump, Nicholson doubled back to win a long jump title. Both marks, the 1.86 meter high jump and the 6.46 meter long jump, earned DIII qualifying standards. The long jump also notched the ECAC standard.

Spring is on its way, and like the weather, the Ephs are beginning to heat up. Check in next week as the Ephs head east to the UMASS Amherst invite.