Although the Cornell men’s track and field team brought clouds with it when it competed against Yale this weekend, the Elis found a silver lining on the day.

The Bulldogs competed on Saturday in a dual meet at home in Coxe Cage against the Big Red. Cornell won with a score of 100 points, compared to the Elis’ 36. The Bulldogs kept some of their best competitors out of the meet, including captain Rob Lobue ’04, in preparation for next weekend’s dual with Harvard. This helped contribute to the Big Red’s large margin of victory. Although Yale as a whole lost to the Big Red, there were some important individual successes.

Before this meet, head coach David Shoehalter said he expected the Big Red, the defending Ivy champs, to do well.

“They have a lot of depth in the field events,” Shoehalter said. “This is the last meet where we will focus on performances and less on winning.”

In his first competition of the season, Nate Lawrie ’04 finished second in both the weight throw and the shot put. Lawrie threw 16.78 meters in the weight throw and 15.59 meters in the shot put. His performance earned the Bulldogs six points.

Shoehalter said Lawrie, a varsity football player on the Yale squad who hopes to make the NFL, has been focusing on training for football. But Shoehalter said Lawrie will participate fully in the outdoor season after competing occasionally for the remainder of the indoor season.

In the weight throw, Eoghan O’Dwyer ’04 also scored with a throw of 16.07 meters.

In the mile, Eli freshmen swept the medals. David Napper ’07 won the event with a time of 4:13.43. Nathan Clute ’07 came in second with a 4:20.93, followed closely by Brian Gertzen ’07, who clocked in at 4:21.18 for third place. Napper’s time qualified him for IC4As, the regional championships that follow the Ivy League conference meet.

Napper said he was pleased with how the race went, especially because he normally runs longer distances.

“It was great because the entire track was surrounded by people cheering for us,” Napper said. “I was steady through the whole thing, but I would have liked to have a stronger last lap. Still, though, it was faster than I thought I would run it.”

Across the board, the Bulldogs also performed successfully, albeit not successfully enough to beat the Big Red. Jihad Beauchman ’06 scored in both the triple jump and high jump. Beauchman said he felt good about how he performed, considering the fact that he is still training intensely.

“I was jumping easily — I felt like I could have jumped farther,” Beauchman said. “It is a good gauging point for the rest of the season.”

Beauchman jumped a distance of 14.11 meters in the triple jump, earning a second place finish. In the high jump, Beauchman hit 2.01 meters and tied the Big Red’s Patrick McDonough for second. Beauchman said it was tough to lose to the Big Red, but that it was not entirely unexpected.

“They had four [competitors] to our one in the triple jump and a much larger team in general,” he said. “I had to pump myself up to do well in my own events even though we all figured we would not win. Everyone tried to do individually well, though.”

In the sprints, there were no individual victories, but a few Bulldogs did manage to score as well. In the 55-meter dash, Russell Kempf ’07 ran a time of 6.64 seconds, good for second place. Kempf narrowly edged teammate Omari Douglas-Hall ’07, who ran a 6.65 to place third. Other sprinters who scored include Mike Brown ’06, who finished third in the 55-meter hurdles, and Kevin Alexander ’07, who also finished third in the 400-meter dash.

The last silver finishes for the Elis were attained by Matthew Boshart ’06 in the 1000-meter run and Wyatt Golding ’06 in the 3000-meter run.

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