Dramatic final relay lands m. track in second at Heps

With more drama than a Theta's bad self-tanning experience on the eve of houseparties, the men's Heptagonal Track and Field Championships concluded in a frustrating manner Sunday night. While efforts ranging from respectable to superb were had on the Princeton side, the net result of a closely contested team race was not in Princeton's favor.

The men entered the 4x400m, the final event of the day, trailing Cornell by six points. To secure a share of the team title, the Tigers needed to beat Cornell by three places or more. The Big Red and the Tigers were neck and neck through the first three handoffs.

Rounding the 200m mark on the anchor leg, junior Josh Kauke was one step ahead and bumping shoulders with Cornell's Brian Emerita, neither wanting to concede position. Emerita said a few choice expletives and threw a hard elbow that sent Kauke to the track.

"I can't recollect anything about the actual fall itself," Kauke said, "but when I finally skidded to a halt, I saw the other teams running by, immediately sought out the baton without thinking about anything else and tried to catch whoever I could."

Showing great tenacity, Kauke limped home, with Princeton in last place. The ensuing chaos was unprecedented in Heps history. The Princeton coaches entered a protest, and the initial ruling by the officials was to disqualify the Cornell relay squad and rerun the race with all other teams. This was interpreted as a rerun with any four team members.

Senior captain Cameron Atkinson began madly trying to round up the freshest pairs of legs that could rapidly run 400m. The ruling was then amended to a rerun with the same four team members that ran in the initial race, including the now-injured Josh Kauke. Team trainer Mike Derosie attempted to quickly work some magic with athletic tape to make an unwalkable ankle somehow able to withstand the torque of sprinting. The Cornell coaches protested the ruling. A call was placed to the NCAA to determine whether there was a rule or a precedent to be followed. The rerun was disallowed. Cornell was disqualified, but Princeton's forced last place finish in the relay did not provide them with enough points to catch the Big Red. Princeton lost the team title by three points.

"It was an extremely unfortunate and unnecessary occurrence," Kauke said. "There were no grounds for knocking me off the track. I'm severely disappointed with the precedent that was set, virtually condoning prohibitive fouls at the light penalty of a disqualification because of a fear of setting a precedent about rerunning races already completed. Perhaps most disappointing was the fact that not a single athlete or coach from Cornell inquired with me or any of the coaches to see if I was okay."

Poor sportsmanship on the part of the Cornell runner and squad aside, Princeton did not fully capitalize on the point-scoring ability of its more talented squad. It is for this reason that the team race came down to the final event, rather than the 4x400m being merely a footnote at the end of a dominating performance as had been the case in victories of the Princeton dynasty of years past.

A case can be made that it was in fact in the other relay, the 4x100m, that Princeton lost itself the championship after dropping the baton during an exchange while leading the race. The Tigers were disqualified.

On the other side of the coin, working in Princeton's favor was the 200m disqualification of 100m champion and top seed Chris Lambert of Harvard due to a false start. With Lambert removed and sulking on the sidelines, senior Cameron Atkinson recorded a dominating win with a time of 21.53, earning his team 10 points.

As expected, Princeton dominated the hammer and shot put. Junior Josh McCaughey won his third straight Heptagonal hammer throw championship, with a mark of 62.17m. Classmate Mark Smith placed third with a throw of 57.64m. Sophomore Paul Lyons (17.74m) and junior Rocky Craley (17.10m) placed first and second in the shot put. No Tigers scored in the discus, an event that saw Cornell win two points. In a highly contested javelin competition, junior Tim Releford placed fourth with a throw of 67.06m, while classmate Matt Stack recorded an impressive personal best of 64.76m to place sixth place and add to the team score.

Princeton fared relatively well in the jumps, despite not entering any competitors in the pole vault. Senior Dave Gary (14.96m) and junior Marcus Ford-Bey (14.75m) outperformed their seedings to gain critical points in placing fourth and fifth, respectively. Sophomore Dwaine Banton added to his fourth place finish in the 100m (10.68) to place third in the long jump with a distance of 7.08m.

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Sophomore Mike Weishuhn jumped 2.07m to place fourth in the high jump, an event which saw two Cornell jumpers take second and fifth place.

Justin Reed continued his strong sophomore campaign, running 48.68 for fourth place in the 400m.

Junior Jon Kieliszak, after running a personal best time in the qualifying rounds, ran 3:48.22 in the final against tough competition with a strong fourth lap that brought him from a boxed-in position near the end of the pack to his third-place finish behind Athlete of the Meet, Sam Burely of Penn (3.46.63)

Burley doubled back approximately an hour later to capture the 800m with his trademark kick. Princeton's Kauke ran a strong race to place third (1:51.28), while senior David Dean placed fifth (1:52.64).

Junior Tristan Colangelo placed second in the 3000m steeplechase with a season-best time of 8:57.00. Senior Josh Ordway, the fourth seed entering the meet, failed to score from eighth place.

Sophomore Austin Smith placed third in an honestly-raced 10,000m run, with a time of 30:25.57 on Saturday night. Smith doubled back in the 5000m the next afternoon, finishing second (14:22.58) behind Steve Sundell of Columbia (14:13.98), but the point gain relative to Cornell's was not significant enough to give Princeton much reason for optimism heading into the final event, the fated 4x400m.