Men's track near fifth

The men's indoor track team finished a disappointing seventh out of nine teams at the North Coast Athletic Conference championships last Friday through Sunday at Denison University. The team racked up 42 points and could have taken fifth had they scored only eight more points to beat out Denison, who had 49.

"Seventh place doesn't really tell the tale of how the team performed," Coach Tom Mulligan said. "We had a lot of people perform very well throughout the two days."

Part of the sad ending can be attributed to the Oberlin Athletics Curse that caused sophomore Steve Jackson to be saddled with an inexperienced assistant who fumbled Jackson's starting block during the 55-meter dash. Jackson slipped, fell, and came in eighth, instead of among the anticipated top three. "It was very disappointing, I was almost in tears," Jackson said. "I know for a fact that I'm the third fastest in the conference and the 55 is my race."

Otherwise, the Yeomen had top-place finishes from junior Stephen Kim who placed third in the triple-jump with a 43' 2-1/4', junior Harsha Thirumurthy who took second in the 1500-meter run with a 4:05.59, and sophomore Dan Feldman who grabbed third place with a 52:36 in the 400-meter run.

Another highlight of the meet was Oberlin's second-place finish in the 800-meter relay with a time of 1:34.08, just .2 seconds behind first-place finisher Wittenberg University. "It was real exciting and we almost won," Jackson said. "It came down to the last leg. One of the Wittenberg runners wasn't supposed to run the race, but he was on fire in the other events he ran and they put him in."

The relay team consisted of Jackson, Feldman, sophomore Sean Wesolowski, and sophomore David Ellis. "It was an excellent relay and everyone gave it their all," Feldman said. "It got me pumped up."

The team will have their first outdoor spring season meet on Mar. 29 at the College of Wooster Invitational after losing a number of participants to other spring sports, such as junior James Richter to baseball. "Losing guys like that hurts you," Mulligan said.

As for next year, the team will lose a few seniors but will gain a few first-year recruits and so pretty much remain the same size. "Next year's team will be comparable," Jackson said.

Jackson is pleased with how the season went, especially a new-found sense of total team unity. "Before there was a split between the distance runners and the sprinters," he said. "This year we were really a team. I felt so close to all these guys. I guarded their back, they guarded mine. We really supported each other and it made it easy to compete."