Yeotrackers finish season at NCACs

Team is no stranger to personal victories

Albert Camus might have enjoyed being a track reporter for The Review. This year's indoor track season could have provided the fodder for his Myth of Sisyphus.

Just like Sisyphus, the track team works and works and works. And never quite reaches the top.

The track term for that rock is called depth. When it comes down to winning meets, it's why the Yeorunners don't. "The key is depth," said head coach Tom Mulligan.

Because Oberlin lacks what Mulligan called "enough quality people who can score," the best work the Yeomen and Yeowomen runners can do in the conference is finish sixth and eighth out of nine teams, as they did at the championship meet at Denison University last weekend.

But a matchup against Oberlin isn't an easy win. "People from other teams in the conference respect our people," he said. "We've got people who can run, jump and now throw - we just don't have enough people to place in every event," he explained.

Many of those athletes had a stellar final meet, whether they placed or not. When a runner achieves personal records, especially at a championship meet, that is a personal victory which Mulligan described as "equally pleasing" as placing first.

"Everyone plays a role," he explained, "it adds to the atmosphere when your teammate is really going after it." And go after it, Oberlin did.

The men's team had several athletes who placed in field events, an exciting development after being shut out of field competition at the championships last year. First-year Jason Cunningham scored for Oberlin in the shot put for the first time in 12 years at a conference meet, throwing a distance of 38'11". Sophomore Eric Leong was a solid contender for first at the high jump, finishing third at 6'04.25".

Hurting more than the men in their lack of depth, the women's team was unable to score in any field events last weekend. "Other than Earlham College, everyone had more people than we did," explained assistant coach Tina Chase. Nevertheless, Chase described the meet at Denison as the Yeowomen's "best performance all season."

Among other stellar accomplishments in the running events, sophomore Carissa Bennett earned All-Conference ranking twice with her second-place finish in the 55-meter dash and third-place finish in the 55-meter hurdles. Placing sixth in the 400-meter event, first-year Sarah Allen came back to beat people who had beat her in the trials, improving on her previous personal record by a second.

Both the men's and women's relay teams had a good outing; the men were able to earn school records in both the 4 x 200-meter and Distance Medley Relay events. Senior Ted Lytle, who ran a leg of the 4 x 200-meter, was able to earn both a school record as well as a field house record in the 400-meter event. His time of 50.10 seconds was two tenths off of the qualifying time for Nationals.

Sarah Allen said Lytle would not relish being singled out from the team for his work. "What's really important is that everyone contributes the best that they can," she said.

For Allen, "winning is nice but it's not everything." Existentialism embodied, her track philosophy metaphorically explains why Sisyphus doesn't give up in angst over that dang boulder. "What frustrates me most is when people don't try - I find it admirable when people come in last every time but are excited to get their PR personal record," she said.

Camus wrote in The Rebel, "Unless we choose to ignore reality, we must find our values in it." Though the Yeorunners won't win because of their lack of depth, their success lies in doing the best they can, wherein the real triumph lies.