By Bryan Kiel
It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Fordham track team as it rounds out its indoor season. Although Fordham did not place highly in team competition at the Atlantic 10 Championship last week, individual performances highlighted some of the team’s best features. With competition at the Last Chance Invitational completed, Fordham has just one more meet, the ECAC/IC4A championship, before the start of a new season.
The Atlantic 10 Championship, which ran Feb. 21-22 at the University of Rhode Island’s Mackal Fieldhouse, featured over a dozen scoring times among the men and women, as well as multiple All-Conference honors.
The first day’s events featured a multitude of qualifying races for both teams. Senior Brianna Tevnan not only qualified for the A-10 finals, but also an ECAC qualification in the 5000m with a time of 17:22.88. The first day also featured scoring performances from junior Mike Turi and freshman Ryan Riviere. Riviere passed the 4.35m mark in the pole vault, finishing fifth overall, while Turi got sixth in the 5000m run with a time of 14:52.44. The top finish of the day came from the distance relay team, which finished second, taking home All-Atlantic 10 honors. The team, clocking in at 10:03.13, consisted of seniors Jonathan Annelli, Dan Green and Lester Taylor and freshman Thomas Slattery.
Competition completed on Sunday, Feb. 22, with the conclusion of men’s and women’s finals events. The men’s squad’s top performances came in field and relay events. Senior Austin Ruiz posted a personal-best mark of 15.28m, finishing fifth overall. The 4×800 team also finished fifth overall. That team, consisting of Green, Annelli, Taylor and freshman Louis Santelli, combined to come in at 7:52.11, about 10 seconds behind the top team from St. Joseph’s University.
The women’s 4×800 team, however, was the top performer at A-10’s this year, gaining First Team All-Atlantic 10 honors. The team, consisting of seniors Titi Fagade, Kristen Stuart and Melissa Higgins and junior Danielle Rowe led 11 other teams from the conference to place first with a time of 9:02.58. In doing so, it beat both the Mackal Fieldhouse facility record as well as the A-10 record in the 4×800. “This is a really, really big deal for us,” Fagade said to an A-10 reporter after their event. “We should have always, on paper, been able to get gold, and we’ve always come up just a bit short. We’ve wanted to win for the past three years, so it’s a big deal.”
Fagade also got the silver in the 800m with a time of 2:14.81. Other top performances of the day by members of the 4×800 team included Rowe and Stuart, who took fourth and fifth in the 500m with times of 1:15.15 and 1:15.64, respectively. Senior Mara Lieberman also ran well in the 1000m run with a time of 3:01.09. The overall finishes by both teams were not as noteworthy. The men’s team, with no event wins, finished ninth out of 10 teams, while the women’s team finished 10th out of 13 teams.
The Last Chance Invitational at Boston University featured a number of Fordham runners vying for qualification into this weekend’s ECAC/IC4A Championship. Fagade continued her strong performances, breaking her personal record in the 800m with a time of 2:05.76, although she narrowly missed a nationals qualification time. Meanwhile, Rowe qualified for ECAC competition with a personal-best time of 2:11.56. Stuart qualified for ECAC’s in the 400m with a time of 56.84. Annelli led the men with a career-best mark of 4:06.92 in the mile run.
The Rams have high hopes going into their last meet of the indoor season. “After our win at A-10’s, the 4×800 is feeling great going into ECACs,” said Higgins. “[We are] hoping to run even faster than the last two years.”
The ECAC/IC4A championship takes place this weekend at Boston University.
