Track Places Second and Third at Smith Invitational

As the indoor season begins to pick up more steam, the Middlebury men’s and women’s track and field teams both had remarkable showings at the Smith College Benyon Invitational this past Saturday. En route to a second-place team finish for the women and a third-place finish for the men, a number of Panther athletes distinguished themselves in various events. Jimmy Martinez ’19 stole the show by setting a school record in the 600-meter run (1:22.96) and by finishing first in the 200-meter dash (22.79). Not to be ignored, the ladies made their presence felt in the mile run when a pack of Panthers outpaced the rest of the field and swept the top four spots: Sasha Whittle ’17 led the charge with a personal best of 5:09.15, followed closely by Nicki Schachman ’16 (5:10.51), Lauren Bougioukas ’16 (5:10.93) and Robin Vincent ’18 (5:11.49).

Always looking ahead to the national-level meets at the end of the year, Head Coach Martin Beatty ’84 prioritized the season-long development of his athletes in deciding who would be running in what event. “We really planned to train through the Smith meet,” he explained. “That meant keeping some key people home to nurse injuries and running many of our athletes out of their priority event in order to change things up a bit.” Nevertheless, Beatty was pleased with the squad’s showing.

“The team performed great, garnering the school record [from Martinez in the 600] and some impressive PR’s such as Sasha Whittle’s in the mile,” he observed. In fact, he was so optimistic about the team’s development that he couldn’t help but lament having to lose some of his athletes down the road. Using Whittle as an example, he praised the progress she’s made during her time at Middlebury: “Sasha is going abroad for the spring, so I’m very sad that we won’t have her next semester. She’s really come into her own and is finally running the times that we knew she had the potential to run.”

Still, when a team gets contributions from top to bottom, even from first-years like Martinez or Lucy Lang ’19 (who broke the 500-meter school record in last week’s meet)—it’s hard not to be optimistic about the future. Beatty had especially high praise for the young man following this week’s performance: “Jimmy has had a marvelous start to his first year. Breaking Kevin Bright’s 600m record is especially impressive since Kevin was a three time All-American in the 400 hurdles. He has a long range of running well in races from the 200 meters to the 600 meters. But really, Jimmy is just one in a good group of hard workers: our whole team.”

For the men, other victories included Kevin Serrao’s ’18 winning 1,000-meter run (2:30.59) and the 4x200 quartet of Adam Markun ’17, Jackson Bock ’18, Brandon Cushman ’16, and Alex Nichols ’17, who came out on top with a time of 1:33.45. On top of their mile sweep, the women saw Halle Gustafson ’16 win the 600-meter dash (1:42.39), Lang take the top spot in the 800-meter run (2:18.18), and Katherine MacCary ’19 claim the 3,000-meter crown (10:31.88). James Mulliken ’18 posted impressive results with a second-place finish in the 800-meter race (1:59.54), saw the meet as a crucial step in turning the team’s hard work into results.

“As is usually the case with early season meets,” Mulliken explained, “the goal heading into this competition was not necessarily to ‘run fast’ as much as it was to reacquaint ourselves with racing. We have all season to run fast, but now is when we build our training base and start to tap into our competitive focus. There’s a reason why we call early meets like these ‘rust busters.’”

Next weekend, the Panthers will be excited to return home for the two-day Middlebury Invitational, with events getting underway at 3 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 29, and 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 30.