Princeton University Athletics
Princeton University
Heptagonal Championships
Players Mentioned
Tiger Men Place Strong Second At Indoor Heptagonals
March 02, 2008 | Men's Track and Field
Princeton's strong second-place showing at the 2008 Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Track & Field Championships featured three Sunday Heps champions and several other outstanding performances. The Tigers' total of 149 points was only 10 points shy of the previous record for a winning team, set by Princeton in 2004.
The Tigers' performances on the day may have come in the heptathlon, where teammates Duane Hynes and Will Byrd battled it out in the final three events before Hynes came out the winner with a total of 5,423 points. Byrd's total was just 33 points behind; the teammates finished about a second apart in the final event, the 1,000 meters. Earlier, Byrd had cleared more than 16 feet in his specialty, the pole vault, but Hynes also had a strong finish there (14' 9") to stay in control.
Earlier in the day, a Princeton freshman showed signs of things to come by winning the 500 meters. Mike Eddy had qualified second behind a Cornell runner in 1:05:03 in the preliminaries, but Eddy turned that around in the final, running more than a second faster (1:03.82) to earn his first Heptagonal title.
High jumper Justin Frick did as expected, winning the Heps title and clearing seven feet in the process for Princeton (7' 1/4"). Both Frick and a Cornell athlete reached that mark, but Frick was declared the champion based on misses. Ian Fox was right behind at 6' 9 3/4", giving Princeton 16 points in that event.
On Saturday, Michael Maag had won the Tigers' first title of the meet by winning the 3,000 meters. Maag ran in the mile on Sunday, and he finished third in a strong field in a time of 4:08.52.
Two more distance standouts gave strong performances for Princeton in the 5,000 meters. Justin Pines' time of 14:34.65 was second-best on Sunday, while Ben Sitler's 14:41.58 was good for fourth place in the event.
The Tiger distance medley relay group featured seniors James O'Toole and Rob Grote, sophomore Jeff Carbonella and freshman Jordan Sawadogo, and that foursome finished second in that event in 10:01.52. Both the mile- and two-mile relay Princeton teams placed fifth in their events.
Back in the field events, Princeton got second-place marks in both the triple jump and shot put. Sophomore Eric Plummer was just one-half inch off the top mark in the shot put with a throw of 56 feet, 7 1/2 inches, while Nick Crumpton's triple jump of 49 feet, 3 1/2 inches was behind only Athlete of the Meet Muhammad Halim of Cornell. The Tigers had two scorers in the shot as George Abyad threw better than 52 feet to place fifth.
Cornell (205) and Princeton were far ahead of the other six schools in the team standings. Yale had 58 points for third place, followed by Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Brown and Harvard.