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The Dartmouth
March 29, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Track teams triumph at Heps

3.3.14.sports.cover
3.3.14.sports.cover

As the crowd erupted with cheers of “Go Abbey D” and “Let’s go Dartmouth,” Abbey D’Agostino ’14 took the baton from Meggie Donovan ’15. She soon opened up a 50-meter lead before passing off to Liz Markowitz ’16 in the finals of the women’s 4x800-meter relay at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships at Leverone Field House.

Markowitz and Megan Krumpoch ’14 held on to the lead and gave D’Agostino her first Ivy League title in a relay, to add to the 12 individual titles she has won in track and cross country. D’Agostino’s participation in the relay, along with individual victories in the mile and 5,000-meter run earned her the most outstanding performer of the meet award for the second straight year. Between indoor and outdoor track, D’Agostino has earned the accolade four times.

As College President Phil Hanlon presented the senior with her medal, she responded by thanking him and leaning over to grab the medal and put her hands on his shoulders. The two shared a laugh as Hanlon and the senior and tried to navigate the almost comically high podium.

D’Agostino was not the only strong performer this weekend. The women’s team earned 102 points, coming in second place. Harvard University won the meet with 122 points. The performance was the team’s best since 1996. In 2010, the last time Dartmouth hosted the meet, the team only earned 16 points for a seventh place finish. Last year at Harvard, the women’s team finished in fifth place.

The Big Green men’s team echoed its finish last year, coming in sixth place after earning a total of 53 points. Cornell University earned 145 points for first place.

Both the men’s and women’s team positioned themselves well after Saturday, a day mostly consisting of preliminary competitions. The major upset of the day came in the 3,000-meter run where Columbia’s Tait Rutherford won from the first and supposedly slower heat. Will Geoghegan ’14 and John Bleday ’14 took to the track knowing they would need to run faster than Rutherford’s time of 8:17.03 to win, but the pair posted times of 8:24.97 and 8:25.82, good for fourth and fifth overall.

The Big Green women sat in first place after Saturday and qualified at least one person for finals in every event except the 60-meter hurdles. D’Agostino won her 11th individual Heps title in the 5,000-meter run over gutsy Princeton freshman Megan Curham.

In the tactical race, D’Agostino took to the track for the 5,000 about an hour after her mile prelim and stuck with the pack for around two miles of the race. D’Agostino, Curham and Columbia University’s Waverly Neer then broke away from the pack, and D’Agostino pulled away from both of them in the final laps for a four second victory. D’Agostino’s relatively slow time of 16:08 was a purposeful move to save energy for Sunday’s races.

On Saturday, Janae Dunchack ’14 made history, becoming the second Ivy League athlete to win four indoor pentathlon titles. Dunchack was in the lead the entire time, winning the hurdles to start and claiming second in the shot put and high jump. The pentathlon was not enough for Dunchack as she chose to also compete in the open long jump Saturday, and came in second to earn a total of 18 team points for Dartmouth.

“It feels pretty surreal,” Dunchack said. “I feel like I don’t understand the full magnitude of what just happened, but I’m really glad it did, and I’m really glad that I had so much support.”

Both Big Green teams put up impressive performances at Leverone on Sunday. The men started with the mile final with a deafening crowd for the three Dartmouth runners. The field responded — the top four runners were under the meet record led by Steven Mangan ’14 whose time of 4:01.69 will stand as the new record and qualifies him for NCAA indoor nationals. Geoghegan followed in fourth in 4:02.83, a time that would have won the meet any other year, and Tim Gorman ’16 claimed sixth place in 4:09.32.

“With us having three guys in, we talked about setting up to make it fast, so we were sort of surprising people,” Mangan said. “[It] worked pretty much perfectly to plan. Will was pushing it hard late in the race, and I was fortunate enough to stick on him and have a good last 200.”

Dartmouth runners earned six points in the 60-meter hurdles with Danny Katz ’16 finishing in fourth followed by Alex Frye ’17 in fifth.

Curtis King ’16 gave a strong performance in the 5,000-meter run finishing in fifth place with a time of 14:24.95 and earning two more points.

The distance medley relay came together for a first place finish and 10 points for the team. Bleday started the team in a good position with his 1200-meter leg and passed the baton off to Phil Gomez ’17 in second place. Gomez held that position in his 400-meter leg before passing it off to Mangan. Mangan continued his successful day as he was able to move up in his 800-meter leg and pass off to Geoghegan in first. Geoghegan held the lead even as the anchors from Columbia and Penn were closing the gap.

“I got the baton with a lead, and I was basically trying not to blow it,” Geoghegan said. “The Columbia and Penn guys had to work a little harder to catch me, so I had a little more left at the end. I wanted to take the lead at 200, I had bad luck so far at Heps trying to pass people in the last straight away, so I wanted to take it with a lap to go.”

The 4x800-meter team of Luke Decker ’15, Kevin Stanko ’16, Lukas Zirngibl ’14 and Gorman performed better than expected and earn a third place finish and six points for the team.

The most disappointing relay was the men’s 4x400-meter relay which dropped the baton resulting in a DNF.

Races Sunday crowned four Dartmouth women individual champions as well as one relay. The mile was a highlight on the women’s side as well. D’Agostino took the pace out a little faster than she had the day before and her time of 4:40.28, the second fastest time in meet history behind her 2013 record, earned her a third consecutive mile title.

D’Agostino turned around to the sight of teammate Markowitz finishing in second to earn the Big Green 18 points in the event. Markowitz fell to the track after finishing in 4:44.53.

“Liz literally ran it perfectly,” D’Agostino said. “Plan was to go out for this one and run more of an honest pace because I knew I didn’t want it to come down to a kick at the end. So I tried to reel it out a little bit and then stay smooth when I knew I had a comfortable lead.”

After finishing with All-American accolades in cross country, Dana Giordano ’16 proved that D’Agostino was not the only elite distance runner on the team, winning the 3,000-meter run in 9:21.77 over Princeton’s Curham by less than half a second.

In the 800-meter run, Krumpoch took to the track with a mission to not only win, but qualify for NCAA indoor nationals. She did both — her time of 2:05.56 earned her the win over Harvard’s Erika Veidis, and her converted time of 2:04.13 stands as the eighth best collegiate time in the country this year.

The other athlete to win an individual title was Jennifer Meech ’16 who had a full day with the 200-meter, 400-meter and 4x400-meter relay. Meech contributed 13 points to the team score with her individual victory in the 200-meter dash race, sixth place finish in the 400-meter run and fifth place in the relay. After running 24.64 in the first section of the 200-meter dash finals, Meech had to wait and see if anyone would run faster in the second heat. The fastest time posted was a 24.72, giving Meech the win.

The crowd was deafening for the penultimate event of the day when Kumproch, D’Agostino, Markowitz and Donovan came together for the 4x800-meter relay. While D’Agostino usually runs the anchor leg, after Kumproch’s victory she took over as anchor, putting D’Agostino in second. As soon as D’Agostino gapped the field in the second leg, the Big Green did not lose the lead, earning 10 more points for the team.

“The relays are where it’s at,” D’Agostino said. “Megan just brought it home, so to win with flying colors is just so exciting and rewarding.”