Friday's invitational at the Rochester Institute of Technology was the final test before the track and field teams compete in SUNYACs this weekend. Both the men and women racketed up impressive times and records.
On the men's side, junior Lee Berube highlighted the meet with another fantastic performance. Berube ran the 800, 1,000 and 3,000-meter. He ran the 1,000 in 2 minutes, 35 seconds – a Top 10 All-Time at Geneseo. "It's very hard to run those three races in one meet … it's murderous," said head coach Dave Prevosti.
In the mile, Geneseo grabbed the top three times with senior Bobby Henchen, sophomore Tim Chambers and senior Bill Juda; all came in at under 4:30. "That really showed that the strength of our team is our distance runners," Prevosti said.
The 800-meter saw an even better performance by Geneseo, as the athletes recorded the top five times of the meet, all less than 2 minutes. "That doesn't happen too often," Prevosti said. Junior Chris Carter and senior Lee Gabler took first and second, respectively, and qualified for the Eastern College Athletic Conference championship. Their times earned Top 10 Geneseo All-Time recognition.
The women also dominated the 800 with six of the top seven times. Three of the women qualified for the ECAC championship.
In the field events, junior Nwana Okafor won the long jump with a jump of 6.93 meters, just short of his personal record of 6.98. Junior Zach Markel posted a personal record of 15.19 meters in the shot put, taking third in Geneseo's All-Time records. Senior Brittany Talani earned a personal record of 11.02 meters in the shot put and senior Maria Barbaglia posted a 13.8 in the weight throw. Both placed first in their respective events.
This meet solidified six qualifiers into the SUNYAC championships. One qualifier was Diahann Cuevo, who finished first in the 55-meter dash with a time of 7.5 seconds and third in the 200 at 27.87 seconds.
Sophomore Esther Lok, another SUNYAC qualifier, took first in the women's 5,000 with a time of 19:25.34.
The 4x200 relay teams for both the men's and women's teams won their respective races, and both squads posted times that rank Top 10 All-Time. According to Prevosti, these times are building blocks to a conference championship.
The SUNYACs start this Saturday at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Geneseo enters the championship in the third seed. "We have enough people that we're in a good position to win it all … I'd rather have our team over any other team in the conference right now," Prevosti said after looking over some of the rosters of other teams in the conference.
"There's two ways to get better: shore up your weak areas and get your strengths stronger. I think we have done both in the last few weeks," Prevosti said. "We've positioned ourselves to win the conference championship."