Men's track sprints into the outdoor season at Relays event

Despite only getting one day to practice outside before having to face their first outdoor competition since the end of last spring’s season, the men’s track and field team showed up to play last weekend at Mary Washington College’s Battleground Relays. “We ran pretty well,” Head Coach John Izzo said. “Most of our relays ran well and our weight people did a really nice job. In most cases it was the first or second day they got to practice outside, [so] I was pretty happy.”The shift outdoors had little effect on senior Andrew Wunder, who continued his success from the indoor season. In the hammer throw, he placed sixth with a mark of 150’9.” Finishing seventh was teammate sophomore Chris Skeehan, who marked 145’6.” Wunder also posted a strong mark in the discus, as he marked 136’10” to finish fourth. Sophomore Andrew Lange marked 126’9,” finishing seventh. The best finish of the weekend for Wunder came in the shot put, which he marked 46’7.25″ to finish second. Senior Zach Opsitnick placed fourth in the event, as he marked 42’1.” Lange followed up his seventh-place discus finish with another seventh-place finish, this time in the javelin, which he threw 149’00.” Also in the javelin, senior Brian Ecker marked 130’10” to place tenth.The 4×100-meter relay team ran 46.20 seconds to finish in sixth place. With back-to-back finishes, the A and B 4×200-meter relay teams were sixth and seventh respectively. With a time of 3:24.88, the 4×400-meter relay team was second overall, just .53 seconds off the winning time. Also finishing second was the sprint medley relay, which completed the race in 3:39.20. The distance medley relay team ran 10:36.51 to finish in third place. A finishing time of 8:06.50 was good enough for the 4×800-meter relay team to finish fourth. In the 3,000-meter run on Friday, freshman Andrew Whitbeck ran 9:10 to finish first overall. Also on Friday, junior Ian Slattery ran the 10,000-meter run in 34:13, also finishing first. In the same event, junior Peter Nabozny was sixth with a time of 35:46. Freshman Ben Snyder placed tenth in the 1,500-meter run, completing the race in 4:18.46. In the 5,000-meter run, sophomore Andrew Dylag was sixth with a time of 16:25.43. Freshman Thomas Palma ran 18.39 seconds in the 110-meter high hurdles, finishing eighth. In the 400-meter hurdles, senior Mike Hakiel and senior Adam Smith were second and fourth with times of 58.12 and 59.23 seconds. Freshman Tom Felio posted a mark of 5’10” in the first outdoor high jump of his college career.Since returning from Virginia, the team has recently had the good fortune of being able to practice outside, but Izzo said it is often necessary to “change our workouts to take advantage of the good days.” This weekend the team will travel to Brockport. “Every school going is interested in having a good day with good competition,” Izzo said.”We’re in pretty good shape if we can get rid of the injuries. We were very pleased with the indoor season, and I see no reason why we can’t continue that success outdoors and maybe even improve on it,” Izzo said. Swidler can be reached at dwidler@campustimes.org.