Despite the winds, the men’s track team met its expectations this past weekend.
“We’re right where we should be in the season,” Kevin Alexander ’06 said.
Though their times may have been affected by the weather, the Elis placed second this weekend at the Southern Connecticut State University Invitational, one of the first competitions of their outdoor season. With a total of 109 points, the Bulldogs were nine points ahead of Sacred Heart and took second behind only Army, which scored 156 points.
Alexander, Victor Cheng ’08, Dan O’Brien ’08 and Russell Kempf ’07 won the 4 x 100-meter relay for Yale. Later that day, Cheng, O’Brien and Alexander also placed well in their shorter distance events. Meanwhile, out on the field, Jihad Beauchman ’06 dominated the triple jump and placed second in the high jump.
But John Langhauser ’07 had the most outstanding performance of all the Elis. In addition to attaining his personal best in all three of his events, Langhauser qualified for regionals.
“It’s good to qualify this early in the season,” Langhauser said.
Even this early in the outdoor season, Langhauser has made significant contributions. In addition to scoring points for his team, he has helped to make throwing, a previously weak area, one of the team’s strongest.
“Week after week he has been stepping it up,” Patrick Dantzer ’06 said.
Danzter also said Langhauser’s was the biggest performance of the weekend, although the distance runner was not in Connecticut this weekend. He competed alone at Stanford, where he beat his personal record in the 5K by 10 seconds.
Back on the East Coast, Langhauser won the hammer throw with a distance 50.50 meters, beating the runner up from Holy Cross by 0.01 meters. He also placed third in the shot put with a toss of 16.83 meters. That throw placed him above the regional qualifying distance of 16.80 meters and ranked him fourth in the school’s record books.
Though Langhauser also performed well in the discus (45.86 meters), rookie Jeff Lachman ’09 did even better, placing fourth in the event with a distance of 46.65 meters. Langhauser added that Nathan Noll ’09 also stood out among his competitors on the field.
All in all, Langhauser said the Elis had had a very good day in all three throwing events.
Out on the track, the 4 x 100-meter relay team won the day with a time of 41.35. Though Alexander said the time was nothing special because of the strong winds, he said he was proud to see that the team had run a half-second faster than it had at Long Beach two weeks earlier. Later in the day, Alexander placed second in the 400-meter dash with a time of 47.63, just shy of his personal record. O’Brien placed first in the 110-meter hurdles, while Cheng won the same distinction in the 200-meter dash.
The Elis are looking to have even stronger performances in the meets to come. Next weekend, some will compete in the Texas Relays, while others will head down to Princeton. Some Bulldogs may be able, like Langhauser, to qualify for May’s regionals.