SAINTS FINISH SECOND IN NYSCTC OUTDOOR CHAMPIONSHIP

May 3: St. Lawrence University’s men’s track and field team was in the hunt for the 2008 New York State Collegiate Track Conference Outdoor Championship right down to the final events, but unlike the indoor championships, which the Saints won with a thrilling finish in the 4x400 relay, the meet’s final event, to edge Buffalo State by a half point, Brockport was able to hold off the Saints and complete a sweep of the men’s and women’s titles.

The Saints were fourth after 12 events, jumped up to third, just 2.5 points off the lead through 18 events,

and were second, but trailed Brockport by 7.5 points with four events to be recorded. Brockport increased its lead by 4.5 points over those final four events and won with 126.5 points with the Saints second with 115, RIT third with 100 and Ithaca fourth with 95.5 in a 15-team field.

Freshman Dan Ramsey had the only Saint event championship of the day as he won the 5000 meters in 14:59.40, but the Saints did have a number of top five finishes including four second place results. SLU won the 4x800 relay in a St. Lawrence and NYSCTC record time of 7:39.69 on Friday with a team of David Lloyd, Terrance Fox, Erik Donohoe and Mark Burnham.

Donohoe was second in 3:56.59 in the 1500, leading the Saints to a 17-point event as Fox finished fourth and Jeremy Mwenda fifth. Jay Thornhill was second in both the 100 and 200 meter dashes, running the 100 in 11.03 and the 200 in 22.11 and Geoff Grambo was second din the shot with a 15.68 meter throw, (52-00.5) which met NCAA provisional qualifying.

Nick Perzanoski, who won the decathlon last weekend, earned 18.25 points in four events in this weekend’s portion of the meet and finished with 28.25 overall. He was third in the long jump on Friday with a 6.44 meter jump, third in the 400 hurdles on Saturday in 54.77 and finished sixth in the 110 hurdles and eighth in the high jump in addition to running on two scoring relay teams.

Gabe McBride was fourth in the shot with a 14.20 meter throw. Burnham was fifth in 1:55.70, Donohoe sixth and Geoff Millard was eighth in the 800 meters while Jeremy Beaudette was fifth in 9:45.34 in the 3000 meter steeplechase.

The Saint team of Craig DiGiovanni, Thornhill, Jon Mellinger and Perzanoski ran 43.88 and finished fourth in the 4x100 relay while the 4x400 relay of DiGiovanni, Perzanoski, Burnham and Thornhill was fifth in 3:22.93.

Ben Greenberg had a seven in the 10,000 meters on Friday for the other Saint scoring on day one.

Stephen Moore was ninth in the pole vault, Chris Leon tenth in the long jump, Jacob Malcomb ninth and John Ostler tenth in the 10,000 for other Friday top tens for the Saints.