Push for NCAAs pays off

Last weekend, the Tigers had just one athlete with a ticket to the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships. Now, after spectacular efforts in season-ending meets, Princeton boasts over half of the Ancient Eight's 11 representatives.

Six deserving Tigers — two men and four women — will be making the coveted trek to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville this weekend to pit themselves against the creme de la creme of the country.

Junior David Nightingale barely qualified for the one-mile run field. His four minute, 1.61 second time places him 13th of the 15 competitors accepted to the event, which is led by the University of Texas' Leonel Manzano, who clocked in at 3:58.78. Thanks to a Last Chance Meet at the University of Wisconsin on Mar. 3, Nightingale shaved his time down from his earlier provisional qualifying time of 4:03.55, which he ran during the Penn State National Invitational in January.

Joining Nightingale will be sophomore heptathlete Duane Hynes, whose score of 5640 Jan. 14 places him firmly in the middle of qualifiers, at ninth of 15. Hynes's score, in addition to advancing him among the nation's elite competitors, is notable because it broke Princeton's record.

The indoor heptathlon is a grueling event composed of the 60 m sprint, 60 m hurdles, 1000 m run, long jump, shot put, high jump and pole vault. Hynes would view an All-American caliber performance in the competition as a definite accomplishment for the weekend.

"If I can just have a solid meet, I'll be happy," Hynes said. "Everyone wants to win ... realistically, I'm shooting for a top eight."

While no women earned individual spots at the Championships, Princeton's relatively young distance medley relay team qualified as ninth of fifteen entrants with its time of 11:13.47 at this past weekend's Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships. The team is composed of freshmen Liz Costello and Christy Johnson, sophomore Agatha Offorjebe and senior Catha Mullen. Johnson runs the opening 1200 m, Offorjebe runs the short 400 m leg, Costello completes her specialty 800 m distance and Mullen, affectionately referred to as the "old lady" of the otherwise underclass team, anchors with the 1600 m distance.

"[As a relay team], we're all on the same page pretty much ... it'll be my first time at Nationals, too, so we're sort of a fresh group," Mullen said.

The squad enters the competition with the potential to challenge for a top finish, as Princeton's time lags that of No. 3 seed Baylor by less than three seconds.

"I think we're definitely feeling optimistic about our chances," Johnson said.

After the team notched its season-best performance and a school record last weekend, it will be ready to build off that momentum at NCAAs.

Even though Princeton will be represented by several athletes at the competition, it is equally important to recognize those who met provisional qualifying times, eventhough they did not make the eventual cut for the Championships. For example, sophomore Michael Maag and senior Andrew Park made provisional qualifying marks in the one-mile run and pole vault, respectively. Like Nightingale, Maag earned a fast time of 4:02.40 during the Last Chance Meet, dipping well under the provisional 4:04 mark, but it was not good enough to match the ultimate 4:01.74 15-seed time for the Championships.

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"Though a couple of others on the team were very close and would love to be there too, I think I speak for the entire team when I say we are confident that they'll compete very well, and we wish our boys all the best," Maag said in an email to the Daily Princetonian.