The Denault Memorial Invitational was held this past Saturday to honor the memory of fallen trackster Mark Denault. In the field of twenty teams, the Cornell track team had many strong individual performances, including several record breaking efforts.
Among the sterling performances was the one-two finish by freshmen Travis Offner and junior teammate Scott Lundy in the pole vault. Both men cleared the height of 15’09.00″ each setting personal bests as well as school records. Meanwhile, senior Jamie Reed finished second in the women’s pole vault with a clearance of 10’06.50″.
Long jumpers senior Nick Senter and freshman Jason Hart also turned in strong performances. Leaping 23’06.00″, Senter placed second in the event, while Hart finished third en route to setting a personal record. On the women’s side, freshman Lauren Kilduff leapt over 5’04.50″ to take second in the long jump while senior Danielle Brown won the triple-jump with a mark of 39’03.25″. Placing second in the men’s high jump was senior Pete Ippel, as he cleared 6’09.00″.
The distance runners also faired well in the meet, as runners Daryn Johnson, a sophomore, and senior Geoff King took home second and third in 5000 meters in times of 15:34.47 and 15:35.63 respectively. With a time of 8:43.12, freshman John Corley blew away the field in 3000 meters. Also placing in the event was sophomore Barry Kahn, taking third with a strong time of 8:50.39. Sophomore Carlan Watson finished second in the women’s 5000 meters in a time of 18:17.76, while senior Kim Chatman, junior Halle Watson, freshman Kinsy Miller, and sophomore Elizabeth Paddock claimed the first four places in the 1000 meter race. The women also ran well in the 800 meter race, with sophomore Natalie Whelan and junior Lena Mathews finishing second and third respectively.
Freshman sprinter Mike Nanaszko dashed his way into second place, finishing in 200 meters (22.96) and 400 meters (51.07). In the 500 meter dash, sophomore Matt Fiorovanti also finished second with a time of 1:08.78. The Big Red 4×400 relay team stormed to victory in a blistering time of 3:24.43. Additionally, the women sprinters dominated the 60 meter hurdles, as sophomore Caitlin Ramsey, freshman Merili Mosley, and junior Betsy Swan finished one-two-three.
Men’s head coach Nathan Taylor deemed the invitational a success.
“Of the 20 teams competing, none of them were really exceptional, but every team had some really good athletes”, explained Taylor. “That’s what we want from this meet. We want to have more teams competing so that there are a lot of strong performers pushing our own athletes.”
The coach was also pleased by some of the individual performances, attributing the tremendous efforts to a well-rested team.
“Lately, we’ve really backed off of the hard training. Earlier in the year, the guys went into meets feeling really lousy. But recently, they’ve felt really well going into the competitions”, reasoned the coach.
In addition to the Denault Invitational in Ithaca, five of the team’s members also competed in the Canon Invitational in Indianapolis. The quartet of junior Colin Moore, and seniors Geoff Van Fleet, Matt Murnan, Chris Ondrak won the long distance medley by an astounding twenty seconds. In the process, they broke the school record by five seconds.
“It was just a dominant effort,” the coach said.
Also running the mile, Moore and Van Fleet posted sensational times of 4:05.36 and slightly over 4:07 respectively. The times were the second and fifth best all-time in school history.
Archived article by Sun Staff