Looking to see how they stand early on in their seasons, the men’s and women’s track and field teams each finished second in their first Ivy League meets Saturday in Hanover, N.H.
The men took second place in the meet with 64.5 points, falling short of Dartmouth’s 87.5 points, but outpacing Columbia, who racked in just 28 points. The women also finished in second place with 54 points, sneaking past the Big Green’s 52 points, and falling to the Lions, who accumulated 75 points.
“We don’t have a really big team,” David Soiles ’10 said. “What we were expecting from the people who were there was just that we would go out there and compete hard. And, by and large, our team did that. We were very successful I’d say.”
The Eli men had seven first-place finishes. Marty Evans ’11 finished in first place in the 400-meter run with a time of 49.92, while Soiles followed clocking in at 51.37 seconds. Evans also took first in the 200-meter dash with a 22.31-second performance to lead the scoring for the Bulldogs.
“That was really awesome for him just to get big wins like that,” Soiles added. “He was probably the MVP of the meet for our team.”
Reynolds Holmes ’10 jumped 23 feet 2.75 inches to win the long jump. David Smith ’11 inched out a first place finish in the shot put with a 48-foot-4.75-inch performance, just two inches ahead of Dartmouth’s Chris Alexander to lead the throwers.
The participants in the men’s 500-meter run remained relatively close for the first 350-meters of the race with Columbia leading for most of the race, before the Bulldogs’ Remi Ray ’10 pulled out the victory in the last 150-meters and finished in 1:05.27, 1.73 seconds ahead of Columbia’s Justin Holloman, who finished in second place.
Soiles said Chris Ramsey ’13 also impressed him with his win in the 800-meter run with a time of 1:55.83.
“He opened a lot of eyes there and showed what his potential was and showed that he was realizing his potential,” Soiles added.
At the Lidlifter Invitational on Dec. 5, Ramsey knocked in his first collegiate win in the 1,000-meter run. His win at this past weekend’s meet was the second of his collegiate career.
“It was so exciting running against the guys that really matter,” Ramsey said of the win. “It was nice to get a win in my first competition there, I felt good in my race and thought I put a good performance out, but being able to win one of those things as a freshman is really cool.”
The women registered six first-place finishes in their second-place team showing.
Adele Jackson-Gibson ’13 won the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.96 seconds, followed by Emily Shulan ’12 at 8.08 seconds. Shulan later went on to take the 200-meter event with a time of 26.45 seconds. Claudia Duncan ’10, who is the Yale record holder in the 500-meter run (1:13.31), won the event with a 1:15.34 performance.
In the long distance events, Kate Grace ’11 won the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:52.36, while Alexandra Cadicamo ’10 won the 3,000-meter run with a time of 10:00.87. Cadicamo’s performance was a four-second personal record.
But it all came down to the last event for the Bulldogs. Before the last event of the meet, the 4 by 400-meter relay, Yale and Dartmouth were neck-and-neck for second place. The Elis needed to beat Big Green in the event in order to edge out Dartmouth, and they did just that. The Bulldogs took second place in the event, ahead of Dartmouth by nearly four seconds with a time of 3:56.94.
“We are really proud of those girls for beating Dartmouth for us,” Stephanie Reaves ’10 said.
But she added that the team could have done better. Last year, the women’s team beat both Columbia and Dartmouth in the same meet.
Soiles said size might have been an issue for the men’s team, explaining that this year, they have less competitors than in years past, but for Reaves, she said it has always been an issue for the women’s team. She is not worried, however, about the future.
“It’s just early in the season,” she said. “We’re getting better and we will be able to do well against other Ivy League schools.”
The women compete next at the New Balance Husky Invitational and the men will compete at the Boston University Terrier Invitational, both in Boston this weekend.