A battle in Boston between a plethora of teams saw the College’s track and field athletes get multiple impressive finishes this past weekend.
For the men, junior Steven D’Aiutolo continued his dominant season as he jumped 14.04 meters in the triple jump. D’Aiutolo, who recently broke the school record in the event, came in fourth. Sophomore Scott Lisa also excelled in the jumps. His 1.94 meters in the high jump was the best jump by a Division III athlete in that event.
“Last week, when Steve did really well in the triple jump, it motivated me to do well in the high jump and also motivated the other jumpers to compete well,” Lisa said. “From this, the jumpers competing well motivated others on the team to do well.”
The Lions also had several ECAC qualifying marks in the running events. In the 500 meters, junior Alex Brown and freshman Erik Moutenot both finished in the top 20 with times of 1:05.18 and 1:06.04 respectively. Sophomore Dominic Tasco raced to a 1:55.67 time in the 800 meters. Senior Shaun McGeever crossed the finish line at 4:20.85 in the mile. Sophomore Michael Spekhardt sprinted to a 50.15 mark in the 400 meters. Finally, senior Andy Herschman was able to qualify for the ECAC’s in the 5,000 meters with a time of 14:53.74, a nice moment for the senior. All of those times were ECAC worthy.
The women were also successful in their quest for ECAC qualifiers. Leaving their mark on the running events, the Lions were led by sophomore Megan Flynn and junior Cathy Goncalves who finished nearly side by side in the 5,000 meters with times of 17:36.12 and 17:36.52 respectively. Both were top 20 in the event.
“Cathy and I do all of our workouts together and we work really well together in races, which is nice because we help each other a lot during races,” Flynn said. “We both ran pretty big personal records so it was pretty exciting to see all of our hard work starting to pay off. “
The freshmen duo of Michelle Cascio and Katelyn Ary had times of 59.15 seconds and 60.07 seconds in the 400 meters. Senior Katie Nestor and sophomore Anginelle Alabanza qualified in the mile with times of 5:06.30 and 5:11.92. Sophomore Emily Kulcyk rounded out the running events had a top 20 finish in the 500 meters at 1:19.04.
Sophomore Erica Roberts also had some ECAC qualifying marks in the jumps. She had a 5.25-meter jump in the long jump and a 10.58-meter leap in the triple jump.
Once again, the Lions proved they can compete with bigger schools, evident by their impressive performances in Boston.
“This just shows how deep and talented our team is and to have so many people qualifying for ECACs early on in the season,” said Flynn. “It shows that we’re only going to improve from this point, and we will be competitive as a team at ECACs.”
The College heads to New York University on Saturday for the D3 challenge.
“I think we should compete pretty well,” said Lisa. “We are used to competing at meets with high levels of competition and doing well so we will just treat this meet like any other and compete the same as we have throughout the season.”
