By Jenna Ciccotelli, sports editor
After a month off from competition, the Northeastern University (NU) men’s and women’s track and field teams opened 2017 finishing seventh out of eight teams at the Battle in Beantown and Multi-Meet at Harvard University last weekend, despite 30 personal bests from Husky athletes.
The Multi-Meet is a meet for athletes who specialize in the heptathlon and pentathlon. The men’s heptathlon consists of seven events over a two-day span: The 60-meter dash, long jump, shotput and high jump on day one, followed by the 60-meter hurdles, pole vault and 1,000-meter run the next day. The women’s pentathlon is a one day event that consists of the 60-meter hurdles, high jump, shotput, long jump and 800-meter run. Juniors Nick Fofana and Matt Richards, senior Matthew Ferri and freshman Mark Puglia participated in the men’s heptathlon, while senior Betsy Garnick and sophomores Julia Marshall and Anna Noble competed in the women’s pentathlon.
“I felt that the Multi-Meet went well. We had five athletes of the seven set personal bests,” said head coach Cathrine Erickson. “[Garnick and Fofana] are both upperclassmen who were among those five. As the season progresses I anticipate seeing the entire group improving even more.”
Garnick and Fofana, who finished sixth and second in their respective events, set personal bests broke personal records, along with Puglia, Marshall and Noble. Fofana is just 51 points away from breaking the school record in the heptathlon.
Records are made to be broken, however, which was made clear by sophomore Paige Suse and senior Kyle Darrow. Suse broke the school record in high jump in two of the Huskies’ three meets this season, improving upon her own record with a jump of 1.78 meters this weekend. Darrow broke the school record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.81 seconds, a record he has both broken and tied in the past. With their historic performances, both Suse and Darrow won their events.
Other top finishes among the Huskies included junior Jessica Scott, who finished third in the 60-meter dash, sophomore Danae Bucci with a second place finish in the high jump, two top 10 finishes in the shot put and three in the top 10 of the weight throw. Sophomore Chris Jewett won the 200-meter dash with a time of 22.45 seconds and the men’s 400 relay team had a second place finish.
Despite the low overall finish from the team, Erickson remained positive about her team’s performance.
“Moving into [this meet], it is more common for our group’s mindset to be focused on getting back into a rhythm of training,” she said. “We actually only competed a partial team as we are preparing a number of our athletes to compete at our home meet. We are right on schedule.”
The Huskies will host the Joe Donahue Invite at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center on Saturday.
“We are still going to be working through some training load,” Erickson said. “We look forward to seeing [senior] Paul Duffey […] in the mile in addition to Darrow long jumping. On the women’s side, the middle distance crew will be opening up and I anticipate some of the female throwers to have some breakthrough performances.”
Photo by Alex Melagrano
