The men's track and field team finally got its chance to put on a show in front of the home crowd when it hosted the Brown Invitational on Saturday. Brown won six events and had multiple athletes finish in the top three of their events.
"It's always good to have home-field advantage," said sprinter Miles Craigwell '09. "Knowing that you have friends and family there watching gives you a lot of support and makes you want to do well."
The invitational attracted several of the top track and field teams in the area to College Hill this weekend. Ivy League rivals such as Harvard and Yale brought athletes on Saturday as well as regional foes such as the University of Connecticut and the University of Rhode Island.
"Regardless of whatever team won the meet, the toughest competition is always against the other Ivies," said middle-distance runner Ozzie Myers '08. "You always want to go out and send a message."
Despite missing a large portion of their throws and sprints squads, who were participating in a meet held by the University of Tennessee, the Bears managed to send a strong message under the sunny skies at Brown Stadium.
"Our coach reminded us of the importance of the meet," said javelin thrower Sam Urlacher '09. "Our championship meet is only a few weeks away now, and you never know what the weather is going to be like for our remaining meets."
Myers took advantage of the opportunity to race on his home track by running the 3,000-meter steeplechase seemingly without competition - the runner-up finished almost 22 seconds behind him. His personal best time of 9:12.16 won the race and landed him in seventh overall on Brown's top 10 all-time list in the event.
"(Director of Track and Field Craig Lake) didn't really tell me much before the meet, just go out and run my race," Myers said. " 'Don't hit any steeples.' "
Taking a page out of Myers' book, a fleet of Bears dominated the 3,000-meter run. Brian Schmidt '09, Stephen Chaloner '09, Duriel Hardy '10 and Ryan Graddy '08 placed first, third, fourth and fifth, respectively.
"Although this was technically a scoring meet, it really wasn't about team competition," Schmidt said. "We were missing many of our best sprinters and throwers. (The) meet was mainly about making individual improvements."
Craigwell ran to a second-place finish in the 100-meter dash with a time of 11.49 seconds. Sean O'Brien '09 also put up a silver-medal finish in the 400-meter run with a time of 49.97 seconds, less than a second behind the winner. He also pulled double duty, running to a sixth-place finish in the 200-meter dash.
The Bears posted a number of successes in the field events to cap the successful day. Urlacher won the javelin with a throw of 170-feet 9-inches. David Howard '09 launched the discus a distance of 154-feet 6-inches, good for second place. Howard also took home a bronze in the shot put with a 48-foot 10.25-inch throw.
"The goal was to compete hard," Lake said. "It was to compete to win or as close to winning as possible."
To continue the winning ways of the day, Mike Woods '09 bested the competition in the pole vault by clearing 14-feet 7.25-inches, and Deshaun Mars '08 took home gold in the long jump with a 22-foot 2.5-inch jump.
Brown swept the top three spots in the triple jump. Reggie Cole '10 hopped, skipped and leaped to first with a 47-foot 0.75-inch attempt and was followed by Craigwell and Andrew Chapin '10, landed in second and third places, respectively, in the event.
The Bears will face the Huskies again next weekend at the UConn Husky Spring Invitational in Storrs, Conn.
"I don't think we are too concerned about beating the Huskies," Schmidt said. "They are not in our league, and when we face them, we are often missing important parts of our team. ... Next week, myself and a few of our top distance runners will not be competing or competing in events that we don't specialize in. We are preparing for (the Heptagonal Championships)."
The Heptagonal Championships, the culmination of the season for the Bears, looms on the horizon only three weeks away.
"Heps is the only meet that we truly care about team placing, so until then we are using each competition as a tune-up for Heps on an individual level," Lake said. "Each competition is an opportunity to learn and improve as an athlete both mentally and physically. Each athlete's individual performances are critical to our team's success at Heps."
