The Big Green men's track and field team ended a strong season with fifth place at the IC4A Championship while the women's team took 18th place at the ECAC Championship.
For the men's team, fifth place in the IC4A represents a tremendous improvement over last year's 19th place finish. A total of 16 athletes from the men's team traveled down to Princeton for the competition.
Georgetown University stole the event with 81 points followed by the University of Connecticut at 37 points. Dartmouth trailed Manhattan College and the U.S. Naval Academy with 26 points.
Men's Coach Barry Harwick said Dartmouth performed well as a team and individually this year.
"The team results were much, much better than we've had in the last four years," he said.
One-hundred one schools from "as far north as Maine" and "as far south as Virginia" arrived at Princeton for the IC4A, Harwick said. This year, 52 different schools scored at the meet and of those, Dartmouth was fifth.
Co-Captain Lane Burks '97 said the team had a "pretty good performance."
Some of the outstanding scores that vaulted Dartmouth into fifth place included Adam Nelson '97 winning the shot put with a throw of 58 feet and six inches and Greg Johnson '99 setting a new Dartmouth record in the 55-meter hurdles with an NCAA provisional qualifier time of 7.39.
Harwick said the showing by Johnson just continued a "really outstanding year."
Steve Clark '97 finished sixth in the high jump with a leap of 6 feet 10 inches and a quarter.
Also strong showing by two of the younger members of the team in the shot put -- Rey Hubbard '99 and Shaun McGregor '00 -- aided in pushing Dartmouth into the fifth- place slot.
The men's team is looking forward to an excellent spring season, Harwick said.
"We did very well indoors, but I think we'll do even better outdoors," he said.
Burks said Dartmouth would be the team to beat in the spring.
"I think we can have a chance to do really well outdoors because we'll have more events that people will qualify in," he said. "We'll probably do much better [in the] ICs come springtime. I think we could have our highest finish in a long time -- since the '80s."
While the men's team improved at the IC4A, the women's team had a more disappointing score at the ECAC Championship despite the home advantage of Leverone Field House.
In what women's Coach Sandra Ford-Centonze called a "rebuilding" season, the team placed 18th out of 43 schools that scored.
This is quite a drop from last year's seventh-place finish.
The Big Green scored 14 points to tie U. Conn for 18th place. George Mason University won the team title with 107.5 points.
Five Dartmouth athletes qualified for the events but the only woman who scored individually was Anne Devlin '99, who had a runner-up finish in the 1,000 meter with a time of 2:54.55 -- less than a second behind the next higher time of 1:53.89.
Ford-Centonze said Devlin "did an unbelievable job" but unfortunately, the 1,000 meter is not an NCAA event.
Also, the impressive 4x800 relay team, which includes Devlin, pulled it together to place fifth with a time of 9:16.24. Unfortunately, these two races were the only events that scored for Dartmouth.
"I think we have some talented young kids and in the next couple of years we'll be vying for the title again," Ford-Centonze said.
Junior All-American cross country runner Jenna Rogers '98 qualified for the ECAC but did not compete last weekend because on Friday she will be the sole Dartmouth athlete to compete in the NCAA Championship in Indianapolis. She will run the 5,000 meter.
The men's and women's track and field team will be leaving for their spring trip on March 13 to compete in Phoenix, Az. and the University of Arizona.
