Haverford men run away with Centennial indoor track & field title

HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College men's indoor track & field team captured the 2011 Centennial Conference indoor championship by a whopping 70 points over runner-up Ursinus College Saturday in Alumni Field House.

The Fords won seven events during the day with Tim Schoch pulling out a pair of victories for the champions.

Midway through the meet, Schoch raced to the front in the mile edging out teammate Ivo Milic-Strkalj by 0.02 seconds at the finish. Eric Arnold's third-place gave the home team a 1-2-3 sweep. Lucas Fuentes and Zach Needell garnered sixth and eighth, respectively, to add more points for the Fords in the team race.

A little more than an hour later Schoch was at it again, crossing first in the 800 meter run in a time of 1 minute, 55.65 seconds. Milic-Strkalj was third, Andrew Golato was fifth and Arnold brought home a sixth-place for Haverford.

Earlier in the day Haverford picked up a pair of firsts in the field events. Edward Oh kicked off the meet by winning the pole vault clearing a winning height of 4.10 meters (13 feet, 5 1/4 inches). Not long after Oh's win, Andy Bennett leaped to victory in the long jump. Bennett's best leap of 6.68m (21-11.0) came on his last effort of the event.

Coming into the meet the team race was expected to be a battle between the Fords and 2010 champion Dickinson College with Johns Hopkins University, Muhlenberg College and Ursinus College also in the mix.

The opening race on the track was the 5,000 and the Fords racked up points with five of the top-eight finishers. Anders Hulleberg was second in a time of 15:10.90 while Joseph Carpenter was fourth, Faraz Sohail came in fifth, Elias Tousley was sixth and Chris Southwick added seventh-place points.

Winning points were added into the Fords' column in the next event, the distance medley relay, as Ben Siqueiros, Alec Koffer, Michael Riccio and Golato teamed up to produce a winning time of 10:29.38.

After Willie Xiang (third) and Gebby Keny (seventh) scored for Haverford in the 400, Schoch and company added their points from the 800.

With the Fords starting to pull away from the field, one of their strongest events came up next, the 3,000. The home team didn't disappoint as Hulleberg and Carpenter dueled to the end after a last-lap pass to take the lead, Hulleberg edging out his teammate by 0.57 seconds. Southwick was fifth followed by Brian Sokas in sixth, Fuentes in seventh and Sohail in eighth. For good measure, Elias Tousley and Peter Kissin nabbed the next two, non-scoring, places as well.

With the team title clinched, all that was left were a pair of relays and Haverford was able to finish with a flourish.

The quartet of Jacob Olshansky, Nick Reynolds, Siqueiros and Riccio won the 4x800 relay, then in the final event, Xiang, Golato, Alec Koffer and Schoch finished second in the 4x400 relay by just 0.17 seconds.

Haverford's point total of 164.5 easily outdistanced runner-up Ursinus' 94.5 points. In a three-way battle for the next spots, Muhlenberg (91.5) edged out Hopkins (86) and Dickinson (85) for third place.

Gettysburg College (56) finished sixth followed by Franklin & Marshall College (52), McDaniel College (22.5) and Swarthmore College (10).

Muhlenberg's Peter Rice was named the Outstanding Track Athlete of the meet, while Ursinus' Chris Rountree earned the Outstanding Field Athlete.