The men’s and women’s track and field teams acquired 83 and 84 points, respectively, as both squads collected third-place finishes in Saturday’s Little Three meet. On a brisk weekend in Williamstown, the hosts accumulated 183 points from both their men’s and women’s teams to earn convincing team victories over Little Three rivals Amherst and Wesleyan. Isabella Cucchi ’13 (100m) and Jamie Lawrence ’12 (steeple chase) each earned first place finishes for Wesleyan.
In addition to Cucchi’s winning time of 13.58 seconds in the 100 meter dash, Wesleyan women earned four second-place finishes. The top Cardinal 4×100 relay combination of Lia Monti ’13, Julia Frieze ’12, Kiran Sheffrin ’10, and Cucchi torched the third-place Amherst relay team by 14.48 seconds, but they were edged out by Williams by less than a second. Similarly, Kora Shin ’10 came up a meter short to Williams’ Julia Cohan in the javelin, but secured second place over Amherst’s Jordan Roehl by over eleven meters. Kathryn Kulowski ’11 also placed second in the high jump as Williams generally dominated the field events with 86 team points, over half of the 164 points awarded.
On the track, the women did best in the 5000m, with Ravenna Neville ’10 and Julia Mark ’13 finishing second and third, respectively. Neville’s time of 17:30.50 was good enough to earn her a provisional qualification in the Division III championships, which will be held a month from now at Baldwin-Wallace College. Additionally, Neville will be competing at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia later this week. She will be running the 10k at the famous competition—she finished 36th last year.
The men dropped 19 team points from last year’s Little Three total of 102, but both team’s third-place finishes were more a function of depth than quality: both Williams’ men’s and women’s teams are roughly twice the size of Wesleyan’s. This was especially apparent when Lawrence dominated the field for a 24-second margin of victory in the 3000m steeple chase. Although Wesleyan was awarded seven points for Lawrence’s winning effort, Williams took away eight points from the event thanks to second and fourth place finishes, worth five and three points, respectively.
Runner-up placings were earned by Skyler Cummins ’13 in the 5000m, Matt Katz ’11 in the 1500m, and the 4x100m relay team of Andre Lima ’13, Immanuel Lokwei ’12, Jadeene Gabay ’10, and Jack Pacelle ’13. In throwing events, Mike Moody ’10 came up eight meters short of the Little Three record he set last year in the javelin, and just missed Williams’ Stephan Simalchik for first place this year. Moody did well in other events outside his area of expertise, however, placing third in the hammer throw and fourth in the shotput to earn 16 total team points on the weekend. Additional third place finishes came from newcomer Lokwei in the 400m and Bryan Marsh ’13, who finished eight seconds behind fellow freshman Cummins in the 5k.
The track and fielders head to Medford, Mass. this weekend for the NESCAC Championships, hosted by Tufts. Last year, both teams finished seventh out of the eleven schools in the conference.
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