Men's track and field takes home another Heps championship

Schools have track teams. They don't have track and field teams, or even field teams. If you put the shot, you're on the track team. If you throw the weight, you're on the track team.

Perhaps the lingo should be changed for the Princeton men's track team. After all, it's the athletes in the field who are doing most of the work.

Princeton won four events in the field, several of them by significant margins, carrying the team to its fourth consecutive Heptagonals indoor track championship this weekend in Cambridge, Mass. The Tigers racked up 118 points, 34 more than second-place Penn. The women's team found the competition offered by the Ivy League schools and Navy a good deal more challenging, managing a sixth-place finish, 90 points behind champion Brown.

As he has for so much of this season, freshman thrower Josh McCaughey pushed the men's team to an early lead, winning the 35 lb. weight throw. Competing early Saturday morning, well before any of the runners had reached the starting line, McCaughey blew the other throwers away. His toss of 66 feet, five-and-a-quarter inches was nine feet longer than the second-place finisher, and still was not a personal best.

Though McCaughey's toss helped the Tigers to an early advantage, Princeton had by no means sealed a dominant victory going into Sunday's competition. Off the track on Sunday, however, seniors Scott Denbo and Jon Jessup and junior Tora Harris would turn the battle into a rout.

Denbo won his third consecutive indoor Heptagonal championship in the shot put, outdistancing the nearest competitor by three feet. Harris, ordinarily almost assured of winning the high jump, found tough competition this year from Brown's David Arundel. Arundel reached seven feet, two-and-a-half inches, but could go no higher. When Harris cleared 7-3.25, he was the champion. Jessup also found stiff competition, vaulting considerably lower than his personal best. His height of 16-4.75 was good enough to win, however.

Needless to say, Princeton got plenty of help from its runners as well.

Senior Tensai Asfaw led the Princeton domination of the 1000-meter run by winning in two minutes, 29.58 seconds. Junior Seamus Whelton and freshman Jonathon Kieliszak finished fifth and sixth in that race, respectively, rounding out a powerful Tiger contingent.

Princeton's last win also came courtesy of the middle distance squad. The Tigers outpaced the field in the 4x800 relay by over three seconds. Asfaw was joined by junior Ryan Smith and freshmen Rob Hulick and Colin Brown on that winning group.

Princeton also finished second in the 4x400 relay and third in the distance medley relay, racking up vital points in the heavily weighted relays.

The women's track team had only one winner on the weekend and finiished sixth as a team. Junior Lauren Simmons outleaned the tough competition in the 800 to win in 2:13.99. As a testament to the tight competition in that race, junior Natalie Deffenbaugh crossed the line less than only four tenths of a second behind Simmons, but that time was only good enough for fourth place.

Simmons and Deffenbaugh returned to give Princeton its best finish in the relays. The two juniors, as well as freshmen Dale Maffett and Elizabeth Morse, took second place in the 4x400 with a time of 3:49.43.