Bacon Field House was the site of indoor track’s Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships on Friday and Saturday. The men’s team placed 30th in a field of 55 teams, while the women placed 38th out of 56 competing teams.
Although these standings are low, the Cardinals had some impressive individual results.
Both Owen Kiely ’06 and Ellen Davis ’07 qualified to go onto the Division III Nationals next weekend in Terre Huate, Indiana.
“My season’s not over yet,” Kiely said.
Kiely placed sixth in the mile competition, clocking at 4:23.68. His teammate, Jon King ’07, placed second in the 3,000-meter race, with an impressive time of 8:47.89.
For the women’s team, Davis placed third in the mile run, finishing in only 5:11.01. Lisa Sussman ’09 also helped the Cardinal cause, placing 12th in the 500-meter dash.
“Indoor track is always a long season, and it was even longer this year, with the inclusion of ECACs,” Sussman said. “Depending on where the meet is held, we don’t always go. Since it was home this year, there was really no reason for those who qualified not to compete. After last week’s meet at BU, it was sort of hard to get pumped up for the meet this past weekend. Seeing the magnitude of the meet beginning on Friday, though, helped me get in the right mindset for my race on Saturday.”
Although having the meet at home placed an added burden of spectator demand and the pressure to compete, most of the runners enjoyed the fact that the meet was on campus.
“It was exciting to run in such a fast meet on our home track,” said Jonah Blumstein ’09. “ECACs are probably the biggest postseason meet I’ve ever raced in, and it was fun to compete in front of my friends on the team. I didn’t get a personal record, but I know I ran my hardest, and it was definitely a nice way to close out the season.”
Additionally, having the meet at home meant there were many extra hands to help make sure it went smoothly.
“Everyone who wasn’t competing did an impressive job [patiently] running the meet,” Sussman said.
Although the indoor season is over as far as team competition, the Cardinals are far from being finished with competition, as they have the entire outdoor spring season to look forward to. The first meet of the outdoor season will take place at home for the men and women on April 14.
“The great thing about the last indoor race of the season is the fact that it’s not even close to our last chance of the year to race as we want to, because outdoor starts when we get back from spring break,” Sussman said.
Leave a Reply