Track & Field: Jumpers shine in Heps preparation

The track and field team seems to be peaking at the right time, with 21 Tigers recording personal bests Saturday, as the season enters its final phase.

After next weekend’s Heptagonal meet to determine the Ivy League champion, Princeton will host the IC4A meet and then go on to the NCAA Regionals and championships in late May and early June.

In the discus, sophomore George Abyad led Princeton with a throw of 49.98 meters, good enough for second place, but he could not best Brown’s Brian Powlen. Similarly, junior Eric Plummer led the Tiger throwers with a toss of 17.02 meters in the shot put.

Princeton excelled in all of the men’s jumping events, winning the high jump, pole vault and triple jump and placing in third in the long jump. But the Tigers struggled in the track events, with their only win coming from junior Tom Zozokos in the 400-meter hurdles.

Princeton fared much better among the college athletes, however — most of the winners of the track events were not college athletes — which bodes well for the Tigers as they head into the championships.

On the women’s side, the Orange and Black dominated the 1,500m, with Tigers holding seven out of the top 10 spots in the race. Junior Liz Costello led the pack with a time of 4:23:75, besting her next best opponent, sophomore Ashley Higginson, by almost three seconds.

Both times were good enough to qualify for the NCAA Regionals. Impressively, Higginson will also compete in the 5,000m and the steeplechase at the regional competition.

Aside from the 1,500m, the Tigers struggled in the track events, with their next highest finish coming in the steeplechase, where sophomore Liz Deir finished in second. Disconcertingly, the winners of most of the races were runners from Ivy League rivals Brown and Columbia, against whom Princeton will be competing next week at the Heptagonal meet.

In the field events, the women’s team had the most success in the pole vault, with senior Jessica Kloss and freshman Lydia Arias finishing one-two. Sophomore Emma Ruggiero finished second in the hammer throw, with a best throw of 54.63 meters, and sophomore KC Wade’s 1.6-meter jump in the high jump was good enough for second place. Brown and Columbia, however, also won the majority of the field events. Wade is a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.

The men’s team has one more tune-up event before Ivy League Heptagonals next weekend, the Broadmead Invite, which it will host on Tuesday. Mainly, however, the teams will compete in the events they train all year for: Heptagonals, the IC4A Championships, the NCAA Regionals and, possibly, the NCAA Championships.