Harris starts season strong, breaking meet record in high jump for m. track

In an evening meet that ran into the early hours of Saturday morning, the men's track and field team set the tone for the upcoming indoor season with some notable performances and their trademark depth. All-American senior Tora Harris set a meet record with a jump of seven feet, 3.5 inches or 2.22 meters in the high jump, breaking his own 1998 record by two inches.

With the crowd cheering him on, Harris, the only athlete remaining in the competition, failed to clear 7-4.25 on three attempts. Harris was forced to sit out a large fraction of last season with a navicular stress fracture, yet he came back to garner not only All-American honors in the late spring, but also a bronze medal at the World University Games in Bejing, China.

Although this meet was not a scored effort, and no team champion was named post-meet, the key to the Tigers' defense of the Heptagonal title indoors will lie not only in outstanding individual performances such as Harris', but in solid front-running and depth in many events.

This depth was particularly evident in the men's 3000 meters, where sophomore Tristan Colangelo took the race in a time of eight minutes, 24.42 seconds, while teammates Kevin Gallagher, Jonathan Kieliszak and Michael Baird finished second, third and fourth, respectively. The times of Colangelo, Gallagher and Kieliszak were good enough to qualify them for IC4As at the end of the year.

"Tristan [Colangelo] looked really strong," said senior Seamus Whelton, who was part of a strong Princeton contingent in the 800. "He led pretty much the entire race, and he, Gallagher and Kieliszak finished with strong kicks, so they probably had more in their tanks."

Whelton led the 800 for three laps alongside sophomore Rob Hulick before junior David Dean and Andy Craycraft of St. Joseph's rolled past them in the final lap. Dean and Craycraft battled to the end, but Craycraft came away with the win in 1:54.39. Dean, Hulick and Whelton finished within three-quarters of a second of the winner, giving testament to Princeton's depth in the middle distance events.

Senior captain Ryan Smith, the ECAC outdoor 800-meter champion in 2001, raced double his customary distance, yet still managed to capture the mile race in a credible time of 4:18.23.

"Ryan whomped up on the competition," Whelton said. "At the halfway mark, he was a good 20 meters up on everybody else."

An early season check on fitness and the fruits of fall training now accomplished, the Tigers have one month of concerted training until competition begins in earnest, traveling to West Point, N.Y., for the Army Invitational on Jan. 12, 2002.

"The meet went well. It's nice for the guys to have someone to compete against other than teammates in practice," Mark Anderson, Princeton's sprint coach, said. "We now have a month to prepare for the next competition. I was pleased with the performances, and look forward to the upcoming season."