Indoor Track Wins Inaugural Meet in Virtue

The indoor competition season is now in full swing for the Panther track and field teams after the school hosted the inaugural Middlebury Winter Classic, the first such event held in the new Virtue Field House since its opening in January 2015. Before a packed house that included numerous alumni of the program, as well as the usual crowd of parents and spectators, the meet ran very smoothly for the Panthers. The men dusted the competition with a total of 260 points, 111 better than second-place Springfield, while the women scored a resounding victory of their own, racking up 257.5 points, 41 ahead of Springfield, who came in second once again.
The weekend before that, Middlebury had sent a small contingent of runners who had been able to find practice facilities over the winter break to the Dartmouth Relays in Hanover, NH. Head Coach Martin Beatty ’84 had only positive things to say: “The group did very well. The Dartmouth meet has Division I athletes, so it is always fun to go against that level. At this point in the season, the performances were where they should be, or even a little bit better.”
For the Panthers, the instant celebrities of the event were the four members of the winning 4x200 relay team — Jeremy Carter ’17, Brandon Cushman ’16, Paul Malloy ’18, and Alex Nichols ’17 — who came in first overall with a time of 1:35.23 (1.58 seconds ahead of the second-place team). “The 4x200 win at Dartmouth was totally unexpected,” said Cushman, also a captain of this year’s squad. “A lot of our faster 200-meter guys were still away on break for the race, so the quartet was made up of mostly 400-meter runners looking to get some speed work in. We were surprised to be placed in the fast heat to begin with … So you can imagine our surprise when we crossed the line in first.” When the dust had settled after all the events, the men tied for 8th out of 16 teams while the women snagged eighth out of 19 competing schools.
Still, the elation following the Dartmouth Relays was overshadowed by the buzz generated by this past weekend’s home meet. Before the main events got underway, Coach Beatty decided to let some of the alumni get the first crack at the new surface as thanks for their continued support. “Supportive alumni made this indoor track event happen,” he noted. “In that spirit, I felt that it would be fitting to invite the alumni to run in the very first running races. They didn’t have such a facility, so I wanted them to feel proud of it — it’s theirs as well.”
Current members of the team were equally excited by the inaugural event that, according to Cushman, had been a long time coming. “Saturday was an incredible experience,” he said. “Hosting the first home meet on the track meant a lot to everyone on the team. The seniors were especially excited because we have seen this project through from the beginning, moving from the old bubble into Nelson and finally into the new field house. The alumni only made the day even better. It made you feel the team was more than just the athletes that are here.”
The Panthers found success across the board on their home turf, picking up victories in a total of seventeen events. Of those, the men won nine: the 200-meter dash (Nichols at 23.15), the 400-meter dash (Jimmy Martinez ’19 at 50.60), the 1,000-meter run (Andrew Michelson ’19 at 2:40.7), the 1-mile run (Kevin Serrao ’18 at 4:26.38), the 3,000-meter run (Brian Rich ’17 at 8:59.14), the 60-meter hurdles (Tyler Farrell ’18 at 8.76), the 4x400 relay (Farrell, Nichols, Cushman and Martinez at 3:29.76), the pole vault (John Natalone ’19 at 14’5.25”) and the shot put (Daniel Plunkett ’16 at 46’2.75”).
The women came away with eight victories of their own, including a school record in the 500-meter dash set by Lucy Lang ’19 (1:17.55). The other wins were as follows: the 400-meter dash (Alexandra Morris ’16 at 58.00), the 800-meter run (Isabella Alfaro ’18 at 2:26,02), the 1000-meter run (Robin Vincent ’18 at 3:05.40), the 1-mile run (Vincent again at 5:13.33), the 3,000-meter run (Adrian Walsh ’18 at 10:25.83), the 4x400 relay (Morris, Lang, Paige Fernandez ’17 and Halle Gustafson ’16 at 4:04.97) and the pole vault (Kreager Taber ’19 at 10’6”).
At the end of the day, Cushman felt good about the team coming out of the meet. “It’s hard to get a good impression from the team as a whole this early in the season because Saturday was the first meet for a majority of the team,” he conceded. “But I’m really pleased with how well our team competed during the meet. To my knowledge, there weren’t many people who were disappointed in their performances, which starts the season off on a really good note.” The Panthers will look to continue their success at Saturday’s Smith Invitational in Northampton, Mass. before they come back for another home meet, the Middlebury Invitational, on Jan. 29 and 30.