The Rensselaer men’s track & field team added a highlight to their outdoor season this past Saturday. After traveling to Clinton, N.Y., on April 16 to take on Hamilton, the Engineers captured the Liberty League Championship. Rensselaer accumulated 249.5 points in the victory to overtake the second place St. Lawrence Saints, who finished the meet with a 233.5 point showing.
On a warm and sunny afternoon, the men’s 10K was a perfect place to get the momentum going for the remainder of the day. During the event, four out of the five Rensselaer harriers, led by point-scoring junior Matt Haringa, posted personal records. Teammate Greg Mariano said after the race, “Seeing my teammates set personal records was inspiring and made me want to run fast times.”
And Mariano ran fast indeed, posting the quickest 1,500-meter run by an Engineer so far this season. His 4:07.88 was good enough for a third place finish and scored a few more valuable points.
A strong start from the distance section of the team may have left St. Lawrence hoping for a little mercy from the sprinting sector of the Engineers. This, however, would not be the case. Alhassane Diallo, Kemar Brown, Owen Kellet, and Vincent Hood teamed up to win the 4x100-meter relay in the blazing time of 42.78 seconds. This time was only three-tenths of a second off of the current meet record. Brown, the relay’s second leg, was a key competitor for Rensselaer this weekend. After Brown’s win in the 4x100, he went on to grab first place in two individual races, the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes. Brown’s performances earned him the honor of Liberty League Track Performer of the Week for the second straight week.
One of the afternoon’s closest races was the 800-meter, which was decided by only two one-hundredths of a second. Early in the race, Joe Otto of Rensselaer and Ryan Pollock of St. Lawrence broke from the pack. With a fast pace set, the duo came into the final home stretch of the race jockeying for position. With only meters to go, Otto made a strong surge for the finish, but came up just short to place second. Otto teamed up with Paul Legac, Owen Kellet and Joe Doran in the 4x400-meter relay later in the meet. Trailing, and in second place after receiving the baton, Rensselaer’s competitive anchor leg, Otto, summoned the energy to pass St. Lawrence and open up a large gap in the last 100 meters of the race. The combined effort of the relay team added up to a time of 3:22.9 which broke a four-year-old meet record.
Saturday’s nice weather offered the competitors a perfect time to get a strong performance in prior to the upcoming state championship meets. The solid performances on the track were accompanied by an equally impressive performance on the field where Rensselaer won three of the four throwing events. Senior Jimmy Motzkin’s 61.54-meter heave set a meet record in the javelin and gave him a NCAA provisional mark. Motzkin’s launch broke his own record from last spring by five and a half meters.
Hammer throwers Corey McCormack, Jeremy Burnham, and Lance Chase took advantage of a chance to rack up points in the first field event of the day. The trio placed first, second, and third, respectively. Chase and McCormack also competed in the discus throw, where they again took first and second place, respectively. In other field events, Brandon O’Toole broke the meet record en route to a first place finish in the pole vault. The sophomore defeated Kyle Graham of Hamilton, who also broke the meet record by clearing 4.27 meters, by hurling himself 4.42 meters into the air.
The Engineers will face another challenge next Saturday, April 23, when they square off with several Division I opponents at the Holy Cross Invitational in Worcester, Mass. This will be the second year RPI will attend the meet, and Rensselaer is hoping to enjoy results similar to those from their 2004 trip. The Engineers finished second out of six schools, beating several D-I schools in the process.
