Men's track wins at Holy Cross

By: Evan Crawley

Posted: 4/25/08

04/25/08 - The University of Rhode Island men's track and field team took first place at a meet held at the College of the Holy Cross Tuesday.

"We've really tried to build a team that is well balanced across the board, and I think that showed up when we went to Holy Cross," Rams head coach John Copeland said. "We were very, very pleased with the results."

The Rams won the meet with 243 points, followed by the University of New Hampshire with 141, the host Crusaders at 120, Worcester State College with 36 and Quinnipiac University rounding out the field with 33.

Rhody took first place in 11 of the 19 events, paced by two wins each from senior Ryan McCarthy and freshman David Kennedy.

McCarthy was first in the javelin with a throw of 207-4 and the hammer throw with a distance of 169-9, while Kennedy took the 200 and 400 meters with times of 22.01 and 48.53, respectively.

"I think it indicated that we have a pretty good freshman class, and that is a key to having a consistently good program," Copeland said of Kennedy's two victories.

Sophomore Derek Peterson took first in the discus with a heave of 172-11, and second in the hammer throw with a distance of 168-8, while junior Tyler Adams finished second in the discus and third in the shotput.

Senior Mason Folcarelli rounded out the Rams' scoring in the field events with a third -place finish in the javelin.

Senior Brandon Lamboy's time of 11.06 was top in the 100 meter dash, freshman Nick Sanborn won the 800 meters in 1:56.29 and junior Michael Elliot was first in the high jump with a leap of 6-4.00.

Junior John Carstensen and sophomore Andrew Westover went 1-2 in the pole vault with vaults of 15-9 and 14-9, respectively.

Junior Brian Alexander took second in the 110 meter hurdles, sophomore Michael Russell took second in the triple jump, freshman Manuel Richards took second in the 400 meters and freshman Sean Curry claimed third in the 100 meter hurdles.

This was the Rams' final full squad tune-up before the Atlantic 10 Championships on May 3 and 4 in Amherst, Mass.

Before the A-10, however, the Rams will first compete in the Penn Relays, held in Philadelphia Friday and Saturday morning.

"It's a very large meet with thousands of entries and the meet itself draws a crowd of about 35,000 to 38,000 people per day, but basically we're just looking for individual performances to qualify for later events," Copeland said.

After returning from the trip, the focus of Copeland's team will then shift completely to preparing for the A-10.

"You have to recover from one and go on to the next," Copeland said. "You try to keep your focus on the championship meets, and we're training basically all year long trying not to lose focus."

Copeland believes that as long as the team maintains its focus and polishes up next week, they should be in a position to succeed next weekend.

"We just need to make sure the workouts that we're doing are what the kids need, if the kids have a technical deficiency we need to make that correction," Copeland said.

"We can't go into that meet [A-10] with technical deficiencies, but conditioning-wise we're right where we need to be."