New England Championships

February 23-24th at Boston University

Women's Full Results & Men's Full Results

Team Score

Women - 11th with 30 points & Men - no score

Amherst Results

(Women followed by Men and Recap at Bottom of Page)

Recap

Athlete of the Meet - Romulo Cabeza'08 and Shauneen Garrahan'07

After having split up last week for DIII NE's, the teams were together at Boston University for the Open New England Championships for the Friday / Saturday meet. The women were looking to ride their momentum from the weekend before and post fast times, while the men were looking to rebound from a poor showing and compete to their abilities. The women got the meet started with the early session on friday (trials of the 1000 and below, and the 5k finals). In the days final event for us, Elise Tropiano and Heather Wilson finished 2-3 in the 5000 with both of them improving their times and jumping up significantly in the NCAA Rankings and hopefully securing their spots at the NCAA in 2 weeks. Carly Levenson etched her name into the school record books as she took down the 500 record that has stood since 1995, when ran a 1:18.66. Maria Millard ran a strong, tactical race in her qualifying heat of the 800 to advance to the finals on Saturday. Hannah Campbell ran to her best time of the year in the 400, while Laura Mortimer ran her 2nd best time ever in the unseeded section of the 5000. The men raced in friday's evening session, and quickly proved that they were ready to race. Harrison Lakehomer did a lot of the grunt work leading the race in the unseeded 5000 but ran his 2nd fastest 5k ever. Nate Freese, racing in the seeded section dropped over 10 seconds from his previous best time, and just missed breaking 15 minutes, as he ran great. Rom Cabeza had a break through race in the 800 as he got out aggressively and never looked back as he hit the qualifying mark for ECAC's and a big PR, while in the heat before him Steve Stewart raced to a big PR as well. Jimmy Swanson and Tommy Anderson, running in separate heats of the 1000 both threw down their fastest times of the year. Basile Beaty posted his best time of the season in the 500 heats, and then came back to run the 400 leg of the Distance Medley Relay along with Jack Kiley, Kit Callahan running under 2 minutes for his 800 leg, and then Carlyle Eubank finishing off the relay with his 4:17 leg.

Saturday's portion of the meet, was a more traditional men and women, rather then the separate session, and the teams continued what they started on Friday. The women were led by a very strong double by Shauneen Garrahan who started her day with a runner-up finish in the mile in an NCAA Automatic time, and then came back less then 2 hours later and raced to a New PR in the 3000, where she would finish 6th overall. Maria Millard, having qualified for the finals of the 800 the night before, put herself in a good position during the more tactical race then expected but was able to finish strong in the last lap to grab 4th and improve her time, just missing the school record in the process. She would get some redemption in the record book department in the 4x400 as she had a big anchor leg to help Carly, Hannah and caitlin Murphy break 4 minutes in the relay to break the school record by over 2 seconds and qualify provisionally for NCAA's. Caitlin lowered her best mile time bo over 6 seconds, as she grabbed 11th overall and qualified provisionally for NCAA's while in the same section, Sophie Galleher dropped her best time 7 seconds and just missed making the cut for NCAA's. In the unseeded section of the 3000, Nicole Anderson and Katie Moravec finished 2-4, with both of them running their best times of the year.

The men looked very strong in the mile where Carlyle raced to the win in the first unseeded section, and just missed breaking 4:20 while coming in just behind him, in a new PR, was Will Bell - who also hit the ECAC mark to extend his season. In the next section, John Babbott raced to his 2nd best time ever, despite being laid up by the flu all week long and only able to do an extremely limited amount of running. Daniel Murner used a big last lap to get under the 9:00 barrier in the 3k, running is 2nd best time ever. The 4x800 relay ran into the only snafu of the day - unfortunately, that snafu was the track as Rom (in the lead off spot) got clipped from behind and went down hard on the railing of the track yet was able to get back up and finish the race, handing off in a courageous 2:12 leg and the gutsy effort inspired the next 3 legs as Jimmy, Jack and Sam all raced hard to get back into the race, and despite the fall, ran 4 seconds faster then they have this season. The 4x400 relay got a strong lead off leg from Keith Pendergrass, and then Basile, Kit and Steve finished things off in their best time of the year.