Trailing Cornell by over 40 points in the final hours of the Ivy League championships on Sunday at Harvard, it was hard for anyone but the Tigers themselves to believe that the Princeton men still had a shot at the indoor Heps title.
Undeterred by the score, the men’s squad worked like a machine. Gaining momentum, the Tigers cut into the Big Red’s lead until they had clawed their way back into contention. Yet after losing the past three indoor titles to Princeton, Cornell was not to be denied this year, eking out a narrow single-point win over the Tigers with a final score of 157-156.
While in the end the men fell agonizingly short of continuing their streak of Heps crowns, over the course of the long and grueling weekend the Tigers showed their grit in one of the most exciting Ivy League meets ever.
Kicking Princeton off to a good start in the two-day meet on Saturday, juniors Damon McLean and Tom Hopkins placed first and third in the long jump. McLean leapt to a personal best of 24 feet, 9.25 inches.Breaking off the line and setting an honest pace in the 3,000m — Saturday’s lone track final — senior Michael Franklin took the early lead for the Tigers. With the field still in a tight pack going through 2,000m, it was anyone’s race to win. Going into the penultimate lap, Harvard’s Maksim Korolev took the lead in a charge for home, as the stands packed with Harvard fans roared. Running to a new meet record, Korolev won in 8 minutes, 4.19 seconds. Sprinting hard behind him, junior Chris Bendtsen charged hard to finish second in 8:07.01. Franklin finished sixth.
“Saturday is all about just qualifying people to Sunday,” senior co-captain Peter Callahan said. “Coach always said you can’t win the meet on Saturday, but you can lose it. We had a good Saturday, but we still had a lot of work to do. Going into Sunday we said, ‘Every point matters.’ The mentality is to fight for every point that we can get and to also make them fight for every point that they get."
After doubts about his fitness this season, Callahan put those fears to rest in the mile on Sunday. Much like the plodding pace of last year’s race, the pack crawled through an opening half of 2:22. As the runners headed into the final 200 meters, the pace exploded as Callahan burst to a slight lead over Cornell’s Nick Wade. Callahan crossed the line first in 4:19.90 as senior Michael Palmisano picked up points in fourth place at 4:22.08.
“I definitely came into the meet without much racing this winter. I guess there are two ways of looking at that: one, that I was underprepared and not experienced, or that I was fresh and ready to go,” Callahan said. “I would have liked to have a few more races, but it’s Heps. That’s when it matters, and as long as I was ready to go I was confident.”
In the sprints, sophomore Rob Mohr kept the ball rolling in the 60m hurdles, running 8.08 seconds for second. Following in the 400m, Hopkins and senior Austin Hollimon placed second and third, respectively, in 47.89 and 47.95. In the 500m, senior Russel Dinkins blitzed the field, running a blazing 61.90 seconds to narrowly miss breaking the meet record of 61.35, set by Navy’s Michael Greene in 1986.
However, Cornell excelled over the next three events, scoring 35 points to Princeton’s six in the 60m dash, 800m and 1,000m. Breathing some life back into the team, the Tigers gained back 13 points in the heptathlon to start Princeton’s comeback.
In the 5,000m, the Princeton men asserted themselves at the front of the field. As the race wound down to the final mile, Harvard’s James Leakos and Princeton’s Franklin began to string out the pack, with Bendtsen and junior Jonathan Vitez following closely. Going into the bell lap, Franklin shifted into a new gear to hold off Bendsten as he won his first individual Heps title in 14:18.64. With Vitez in fifth, the trio gave Princeton 20 points to cut deeply into Cornell’s lead.
“We tried to put the meet score out of our heads,” Franklin said. “If we were up by 100 points we’d try to do well, if we were down by 100 points we’d try to do well. It’s definitely nice to win an individual Heps title as a senior. We’ve all worked hard together. A lot of guys were doubling back, and it was good to do well there.”
Finishing up the triple jump, McLean defended his individual title, placing first with a distance of 15.93m, or 52 feet, 3.25 inches — a new personal best.
After a ferocious kick by Callahan in the anchor leg of the distance medley relay gave Princeton the win in that event, the Tigers led Cornell by a point. Cornell responded in the 4x800m, placing first while Princeton took third. For the Tigers to win the meet, they needed to gain four points over the Big Red in the final event, the 4x400m. With a photo-finish lean at the line, Hollimon gave Princeton the win over Cornell by the slimmest of margins, but Princeton fell just short in the overall team battle.
“I’ve been to a few indoor championships now, and this was one of the most exciting ones. The crowd was stretched all the way around the track; everyone was screaming at you as you came around,” Callahan said. “Going into those relays, everyone was up on their feet and against the track. It’s something very special and something I’m going to miss.”
In a close team battle on the women’s side, where no favorite emerged until late in the competition, Princeton placed fourth with 79.8 points. Columbia (85) was third, Cornell (112.7) was second and Harvard was victorious with 117.
“I think anytime you walk out of this meet without winning it’s disappointing,” senior co-captain Greta Feldman said. “We definitely didn’t maximize the points that we could have. It gives us room to improve, but unfortunately we just couldn’t put it all together.”
Still, the meet was not without its highlights.
Undefeated in Heps championships, senior pole vaulter Tory Worthen won her fourth straight individual indoor title. Already the Ivy League record holder, Worthen’s four-peat confirmed her as one of the best field eventers in conference history.
Starting off the meet for the women late Saturday morning, former Ivy League record holder freshman Julia Ratcliffe dueled current record holder Adabelle Ekechukwu from Harvard in the weight throw. Ekechukwu hurled throw after throw past the 20m mark, ending with a new meet record of 20.83m. Ratcliffe did not throw close to her best mark so far this season, but nevertheless easily took second place with a throw of 18.70m.
In the triple jump, Imani Oliver placed third and broke her own school record with a jump of 12.74m, or 41 feet, 9.75 inches.
Ekechukwu’s toss was not the only meet record on the women’s side, as Dartmouth’s distance star Abbey D’Agostino destroyed two in the distance events.
Running unfazed and relaxed in the 5,000m, D’Agostino broke away from the Cornell duo of Rachel Sorna and Katie Kellner, crossing the line in 15:47.02, breaking Caroline Bierbaum’s 2005 record of 15:55.03. Trailing behind, senior Abby Levene and sophomore Jackie Nicholas took advantage of the fast pace as Levene finished fourth in a personal best of 16:25.98, while Nicholas was fifth in 16:33.84. The next day, Levene ran fast in the 3,000m, placing fourth in a personal best of 9:28.84.
In the mile, D’Agostino got right down to business and took the pace out faster than the men had, passing through the half in 2:15. D’Agostino pulled away from the field to a final time of 4:32.42, to win by 50m. Trying to stick with D’Agostino at the start, 1,500m All-American Feldman gradually paid for the fast pace, as she faded slightly to place fourth in 4:41.62.
In the sprints, sophomore Cecilia Barowski placed second in the 400m at 55.35 seconds. Feldman doubled back in the 800m to place second in 2:14.97 in a slow and tactical race.
“The girl who won went straight to the lead and slowed it down,” Feldman said. “I knew she was just sitting there licking her chops, and she ran a great last lap. I thought I had it in me to hold on, but it just wasn’t in the cards.”
Rounding out the meet on a high note, the Tigers comfortably won the 4x800m in 8:44.19.
While losing Heps left the Tigers disappointed, the quality of the competition and the atmosphere of the meet also left many of them with a bittersweet taste.
“Losing a championship is always hard, and losing a championship by just one point is heartbreaking, but I couldn’t be more proud of the guys,” Callahan said. “We’ve been working hard all year; some of the chips didn’t fall our way, but we all fought for it and so did Cornell. In the end, that’s what championships meets are all about — getting out there and competing. It just gets us all that much more revved up for outdoors.“
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