This past weekend the track and field squads competed in two separate meets.
One portion of the team traveled on Saturday, Feb. 3 to the Armory Track and Field House in New York City to compete in the New Balance Invitational against many of the nation's top teams, including powerhouses such as LSU and the University of Arkansas.
Coach Dave Prevosti pointed out the bonus of competing in such a high profile meet saying, "It was good to see our name out there among such big name schools, helping us gain more name recognition."
The members of both teams did quite well in improving the national recognition of Geneseo's team. Senior Joe Goodspeed became the school's all-time leader in the high jump with a jump of 6'9". Goodspeed also qualified for nationals in the long and triple jump, which, according to Prevosti, is the first time in school history that this has been done.
He also pointed out the strong efforts of sophomores Laura Iafrati and Liz Montgomery. Iafrati ran her best race of the season and Montgomery was automatically qualified for nationals in the mile race, winning with a time of 4:57.62.
The other half of the team went to a non-scoring meet at RIT on Friday, Feb. 2, using the meet as a springboard to qualify more of their athletes for SUNYAC competition. They managed to do just that with several top finishes, including a first place finish by junior Karen Merrill in the 5000 meter with a time of 18:12.48. Sophomore Mary McGrath finished third in the same race with a time of 19:00.82. In addition, senior Sue Ann Dunn was third in the 55 meters with a time of 7.62.
On the men's side, senior Erik Weiber claimed a second place finish in the high jump with a jump of 1.9 meters. Also, freshman Tim Chichester and senior Tim Johnsen both garnered third place finishes with Chichester posting a 4:31.23 in the mile and Johnsen finishing with a time of 52.81 in the 400 meters.
Next week the Knights travel to Cornell for the third time this year. Prevosti characterized this meet as "an opportunity to get a few more people qualified in their main events and also as a chance to get some people to double up in events. This is extremely helpful in SUNYACs as we are the only team that ever brings two buses filled with qualifiers. This is a testament not only to our talent but to our depth and should be a tremendous help."