The Oswego State men's track and field team traveled out to Brockport on Friday to compete in the SUNYAC Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The two-day event saw numerous career-best performances and school records from the team, eclipsing last year's point total by eight points..
While the first day of the competition was reserved for preliminary rounds in most of the running events, points were up for grabs in the field and distance races, where Chris Bridgewater and Josh Maiolo opened up scoring with a seventh and eighth place finish in the long jump, respectively. A week after setting the school record in the javelin, Matt McDorman proved that he still had room left for improvement. The senior unleashed a school-record setting throw of 55.76m (182'11") on his attempt of the day. The performance earned him second place. In the same event, freshman Ethan Ehrlich improved on his performance from a week ago, setting a new lifetime best of 49.51m (162'5") to take fourth in the event.
In the 10,000-meter run, sophomore Tyler Morris was the last qualifier in the field. Running a gutsy performance in which he stayed in the leading or chasing groups through much of the competition, Morris not only smashed his previous lifetime best by 40 seconds, he also improved his positioning, taking an unexpected seventh place to close out the night, helping the Lakers finish day one in fourth place.
On day two, freshman Alex Ladouceur took fifth place in the high jump to open scoring for the team. In the first event on the track, the 4x100 relay of Adam Crumb, Brandon Comden, Bridgewater and Maiolo set the second school-record of the meet, taking sixth place in a time of 43.22.
The next record to fall was the 1,500 where Ben Griffin used a 3" career best of 3:56.27 to take bronze against a talented field. Matt Wagenhauser took fourth place in the 400 with a time of 49.71. Nick Reinsdorfjumped up to second place in the 800 with an impressive performance of 1:55.52. Reinsdorf entered the final in third place after setting a lifetime best of 1:54.92 in the preliminaries on Friday night.
In their second individual event of the championships, Bridgewater and Maiolo used a pair of career-best performances to capture 12 points in the triple jump. Maiolo's 13.74m jump in the fifth round powered him to a fifth place finish overall. Bridgewater used a career outdoor best of 14.00m on his last attempt to move up to second place overall.
Other notable performances came from Kyle Harbour in the decathlon, who set new lifetime-best marks in all five events on day one, finishing the two-day event in 12th place.
The men will now turn their attention to improving their individual performances at Oneonta on Saturday as they begin the process of qualifying for the 2015 NCAA Outdoor Championships.
