Men’s and women’s track and field faced off in a historic meet this past weekend, teaming up with Penn to face off against the Achilles Track Club, a combination of athletes from Oxford and Cambridge University. This transatlantic battle took place in Ithaca on Cornell’s home track, with the women’s Cornell-Penn squad outscoring the Achilles Track Club 15-4.
The Red’s women accounted for nine of those 15 points, winning a staggering 11 events of the meet. The men’s squad performed equally as well with the Cornell-Penn duo winning the meet 13-6, with 11 of those points coming from Cornell athletes along with 13 event wins.
“It was excellent, three school records…making it an extremely successful meet — some of the facility records were broken,” said head coach Adrian Durant. “Just the quality of the performances — the best performances in the history of the program — and to have them happen at a home meet and also at such a historic meet it just makes it that much better. I’m very excited about it. It sets us up very well going into the Ivy league heps in the next couple weeks.”
This momentum will serve the team well over the next couple of weeks as the Red looks to upset Princeton and Harvard to capture its first outdoor Heptagonal Championship title since 2016.
“Currently we’re sitting in a tight race with Princeton and Harvard,” Durant said. “Even though we are the underdogs, we are very very close — what I would consider to be striking range. A couple good events [for us] and a couple bad events for them and we could actually win this thing.”
Both the men’s and women’s teams boast the capacity to not only compete against the rest of the Ivy League, but also to compete against the best in the nation. The men’s 400 meters, 400 meter hurdles, 110 meter hurdles and pole vault all rank inside the top 25 nationally with the women’s triple and long jump squads also falling inside the top 25.
“A couple of our event groups are really highly ranked right now,” Durant said. “Our men’s pole vault group is the 11th best in the country…our men’s 400 group is 21st which is even above LSU. When you think track and field and you think 400 meter runs, no one immediately thinks Cornell is one of the top 400 meter programs in the country right now, but it is. Our women’s long jump group is also sitting 11th in the country which is exceptional…It’s a good indicator of what’s to come.”
The men’s and women’s track and field squads will head to Atlanta on Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22 to take on Georgia Tech for their next meet. Ivy League Heptagonal Championships are just a couple weeks away on the weekend of May 6 and 7.
Lucas Corea is a Sun contributing writer. He can be reached at [email protected].