Heptagonals Track & Field

When Columbia’s Sharay Hale missed qualifying for the final of the NCAA Championships 400-meter dash by .08 seconds on Friday night, it brought an end to the 2010 Heps indoor season and now we are looking toward the outdoor season (along with a serious-looking Peter Farrell of Princeton), which begins next weekend. Here’s a look at the schedule for the spring:

Weekend No. 1 (March 19-21)
Disney Invitational: Orlando, Fla. (Princeton)
Irvine Spring Break Invitational: Irvine, Calif. (Cornell)
Northeastern Invitational: Boston, Mass. (Brown)
Texas Southern Relays: Houston, Texas (Harvard)
Wake Forest Open: Winston-Salem, N.C. (Penn)
William & Mary Spring Break Invitational: Williamsburg, Va. (Yale)

Weekend No. 2 (March 26-28)
Stanford Invitational: Palo Alto, Calif. (Harvard, Princeton)
Titan Twilight Classic: Fullerton, Calif. (Cornell)
Raleigh Relays: Raleigh, N.C. (Dartmouth)
Central Florida Invitational: Orlando, Fla. (Harvard)
Widener Invitational: West Chester, Pa. (Penn)

Weekend No. 3 (April 2-4)
Sam Howell Invitational: Princeton, N.J. (Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale)
Quaker Invitational: Philadelphia, Pa. (Columbia, Cornell, Penn)
UConn Invitational: Storrs, Conn. (Brown)
UNH Invitational: Durham, N.H. (Dartmouth)

Weekend No. 4 (April 9-11)
Brown Invitational: Providence, R.I. (Brown, Harvard, Yale)
Penn at Princeton with Villanova & Rutgers
Bison Outdoor Classic: Lewisburg, Pa. (Cornell, Harvard)
Dartmouth Invitational: Hanover, N.H. (Dartmouth)
Miami Elite Meet: Miami, Fla. (Columbia)

Weekend No. 5 (April 16-18)
Larry Ellis Invitational: Princeton, N.J. (Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton)
Harvard at Yale
Tom Jones Memorial Classic: Gainesville, Fla. (Brown)
Cortland Invitational: Cortland, N.Y. (Cornell)
Moravian Invitational: Bethlehem, Pa. (Cornell)
Mt. Sac Relays: Walnut, Calif. (Princeton)

Weekend No. 6 (April 22-25)
Penn Relays: Philadelphia, Pa. (all eight teams)
Brown Springtime Invitational: Providence, R.I. (Brown, Harvard)
UNH Invitational: Durham, N.H. (Dartmouth)
Big Red Invitational: Ithaca, N.Y. (Cornell)
Yale Springtime invitational: New Haven, Conn. (Harvard, Yale)

Weekend No. 7 (May 1-2)
Princeton Elite Meet: Princeton, N.J. (Brown, Columbia, Princeton)
Cornell Invitational: Ithaca, N.Y. (Cornell)

HEPS WEEKEND (May 8-9)
Weaver Stadium: Princeton, N.J.
Sign up here if you are going!

Easterns Weekend (May 16-17)
Weaver Stadium: Princeton, N.J.

NCAA Regionals (May 29-30)
Irwin Belk Track: Greensboro, N.C.

NCAA Championships (June 10-13)
Hayward Field: Eugene, Ore.

Columbia sophomore Sharay Hale needed to run fast to make the final of the 400-meter dash at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark. Running in the first of five heats was going to be tough, but she clocked an indoor personal best of 53.46. But that time was eight-hundreths of a second off the pace to qualify for the final and earn All-American status from the U.S. college coaches association. Click here for the results of the event. For Hale, her time has been bettered among Ivy Leaguers by just two-time Olympian Meredith Rainey indoor and Rainey and Brown’s Teri Smith outdoor. Could she someday threaten Rainey’s legendary outdoor record of 51.56?

Meanwhile, Hale’s sophomore teammate Monique Roberts cleared 5-7, but did not get over the bar at the next height (5-8 3/4), bringing an end to her quest for NCAA championship and All-America status. You can follow that event here.

Lion soph Kyle Merber did not advance in the mile run, finishing seventh in his heat in 4:08.69. The heat was won, in a mad late dash (a sub-58 final 400m) by Ohio State’s Jeff See. Merber actually paced the race through the first 1,000 meters, but fell off the pace when things heated up. Click here for results.

The folks at FloTrack do an unbelievable job tracking down the news and recording it for all to see. On Monday, a representative hustled up to Columbia’s campus in Morningside Heights and pinned down sophomore Kyle Merber for an interview (click here to see it). Merber begins his quest for a title this afternoon and FloTrack is all around Arkansas getting the scoop.

Today’s Heps competition schedule at NCAAs (Eastern times, fixed as of 3 pm. I had screwed them up. Sorry.)
3:45 pm — Monique Roberts in the high jump final
5:55 pm — Kyle Merber in the mile run prelims
7:10 pm — Sharay Hale in the 400m dash prelims

By the way, ESPN360.com will stream portions of the championships live beginning at 9 pm Eastern tonight and 7:10 pm on Saturday. To access the live stream, visit www.ESPN360.com. Click on the FAQs link for software and system requirements, etc. Anyone with a .edu e-mail address is able to obtain access to ESPN360 at no cost. NCAA.com will stream supplemental coverage as available when ESPN360.com is not live. Additionally, ESPN2 will air a 90-minute show at 1:30 pm Eastern on Wednesday.

Also getting the scoop and doing it right is our Cornell correspondent for HepsTrack, senior captain Kate Murdoch. She took her video camera to Hanover, N.H., for Indoor Heps and produced this wonderful package of the Big Red journey.

While you slept (well most of you anyway), Brown graduate Anna Pierce won the first heat of the 800-meter run at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Doha, Qatar, thus qualifying for the six-woman final, which will take place at 10:15 am Eastern time on Sunday.

Pierce ran a tactical race and took it out in the final 200 meters. As you can see in the photo finish, she eased into the finish line in 2:03.05.

The second heat was much faster as Great Britain’s Jennifer Meadows led from the start and finished in 2:00.39. American Alysia Johnson was third in that heat and qualified for the final.

Harvard graduate Samyr Laine, representing Haiti, finished 16th in the triple jump with a best leap of 16.30 meters (53-5 3/4). That is more than a meter (3.28 feet) shorter than his personal best and it wasn’t enough to advance to the finals. Neither American in the field — Brandon Roulhac nor Walter Davis — advanced to the eight-man final.

Later today, the three Columbia Lions who advanced to the NCAA Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., will each compete.

Earlier this week, Heps Track featured triple jumper Samyr Laine, who is competing at the IAAF World Indoor Championships tomorrow. But Laine, who is representing Haiti, isn’t the only Ivy Leaguer scheduled to participate. Brown graduate Anna Pierce will compete in the 800-meter run in Doha, Qatar, at 3 am Friday morning Eastern time.

One six entrants to run under 1:59 in her career, Pierce has been listed as one to watch by the IAAF website:

“Keep an eye on the versatile Anna Pierce (formerly Willard), who took the U.S. title in 2:00.84, and who has rapidly gained a reputation of her own as a scrappy and decisive racer. A sub-four 1,500m runner outdoors, the American collected four impressive 800m wins last season, beating strong fields, including at the World Athletics Final.”

The IAAF was wise not to identify Pierce by her trademark multi-colored hair. She recently told fellow American track star Brianna Glenn that her hairstyle “usually stems from some salon experiment gone wrong, so I never know how it’s exactly going to look. I really like matching, so it’s fun to match a streak of my hair to my current Nike uniform. It’s so normal right now because I toned it down for our wedding and am giving my hair a break from all the bleaching. I don’t want it to fall out!”

Now you know.

Princeton head men’s track and field coach Fred Samara has been named the 2010 Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, his fifth such honor. Additionally, Columbia assistant coach Gavin O’Neal was named the Women’s Assistant Coach of the Year for the Northeast Region.

Samara — in his 32nd season as the head coach of the Tigers — has won 28 Ivy League titles across three sports and coached more than 200 individual Heptagonal champions.

The Tigers won the 2010 Indoor Heps title as a record 13 members of the team were Ivy League champions en route to 181 points, second all-time. During the season Princeton athletes reached NCAA Provisional qualifying marks 10 times and 14 athletes recorded personal bests in their events.

In his fourth year at Columbia, O’Neal assisted in leading the women’s team to a second-place finish at Heps, compiling the highest point total (110) in program history. His sprinters, jumpers, and hurdlers brought home four individual titles as well as the meet’s award for the Most Outstanding Performer (Sharay Hale). Hale and high jumper Monique Roberts will compete in the 2010 NCAA Indoor Championships this weekend.

As a junior at Harvard, Samyr Laine was atop the Ivy triple jump world, beating future NCAA champions Rayon Taylor and Muhammad Halim at both Indoor and Outdoor Heps. What else is supposed to happen for someone whose first name means “always onward and upward” in Arabic?

After injuries robbed him of a productive senior season, finding a silver lining to the setback would prove difficult at the time. But it did open another door… one that would lead to Doha, Qatar, via Port au Prince, Haiti.

Forced to sit out his final outdoor season at Harvard, Laine, who grew up in Newburgh, N.Y., was able to enroll in graduate school at the University of Texas with one semester of athletic eligibility remaining. It was there that he met Nadine Faustin-Parker, a Haitian hurdler whose husband, Anthony Parker, served as the coach of the Haitian Olympic track and field squad.

Once it got out that Laine’s parents, Jacques and Evelyne, were both born in Haiti, the Parkers put him in touch with Haitian officials and soon, after earning a graduate degree from UT, he was named to the national team.

And then his leaps and bounds grew by leaps and bounds. Last summer he soared more than 57 feet to establish a Haitian national record and advance to the World Championships in Berlin. This week, the Georgetown law student and volunteer coach at George Mason is ready for his second stab at Worlds, the IAAF World Indoor Track & Field Championships in Doha, where he will begin competition on Friday (at 6:20 am on the East Coast).

“I’ve never intended on truly making a living from track and field so my post-collegiate pursuits have been driven mostly by a quest for personal excellence,” said Laine.

Until January. That’s when Haiti was devastated by the earthquake. All of his family members in Haiti survived, but the impact has been great.

“I’ve really realized what it means to represent the country. It is certainly not about myself but instead about providing Haiti with some positive exposure on the international front,” said Laine, one of just two Haitians competing in Doha. “I’ve personally realized that I’m not competing just for myself anymore but for the nation as a whole… as grandiose as that may sound.

“As an international representative for Haiti, I’ve been received with nothing but support and blessings. Since I’ve been in Doha actually, every new person I have met has asked about how things are in Haiti and apologized for the fact that the country has to deal with such devastation on top of the fact that things were difficult there even before the disaster. It is all pretty encouraging and heartwarming to see that people seem to care so much and have no problem expressing that empathy.”

Laine, by the way, is a close follower of Heps Track and is a prolific blogger himself. In fact, he has posted a Pre-Worlds update just today. Check out the entire website as he does a great job with it.

He also wants everyone to keep Haiti in their thoughts and to consider his charity of choice — Yéle Haiti. You can make donations by clicking here.

2010 Virginia Tech Challenge – Final Jump from Samyr Laine on Vimeo.

Three Ivy Leaguers — all sophomores from Columbia University — have gotten the nod to compete at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Ark., this weekend.

Indoor Heps Athlete of the Meet Sharay Hale will compete in the 400-meter dash, Monique Roberts (pictured) in the high jump and Kyle Merber in the mile. Hale’s Heps flat-track time in the 400m converted to 53.09 for ranking purposes, which places her 10th. Roberts cleared 5-11 1/2 earlier in the season, which is ranked 15th. Click here for the complete women’s entries.

Merber, who became the Heps recordholder in the indoor mile last week, is the lone Ivy male representative at the Championships. He is ranked sixth in the 16-person field. Truly remarkable is that all 16 have run sub-four this winter! For the men’s complete entry list, please click here.

For the schedule of events in Arkansas, please click here. All three Light Blue athletes will begin competition on Friday.

Kyle Merber, the news-making sophomore from Columbia, is at the center of an emerging mile revolution in the United States. In fact, already this year a record 18 Americans have recorded their first sub-4 mile and, at least here in Indianapolis, we have remnants of snow still on the ground.

Track & Field News has updated its list of U.S. sub-fours and it turns out that Merber became the 343rd American to do it and, from our preliminary research, the 11th 17th such Ivy Leaguer Heps athlete (thanks to Nathan Taylor and Greg Page). Review this list and let me know if you spot others.

Merber’s 3:58.52 on Friday is the fastest first sub-four among Heps runners as a collegian since April 27, 1974, when Denis Fikes of Penn was faster at the Penn Relays! That’s Denis, now known as D. Elton Cochran-Fikes, pictured.

Also, a little praise of Bill Burke’s Heps indoor record which lasted more than 19 years. Burke won the Millrose Games by going sub-four on the small wooden track in Madison Square Garden… without a rabbit. Princeton Coach Fred Samara still calls it “one of the all time great collegiate miles.”

Here is the Ivy sub-four roster as I know it:

68. Denis Fikes (Penn), 3:55.0 [Philadelphia: April 27, 1974]
69. Karl Thornton (Penn^), 3:57.9 [Philadelphia: April 27, 1974]
90. Craig Masback (Princeton^), 3:59.6 [Oxford: June 17, 1978]
133. Adam Dixon (Harvard), 3:59.39 [Luxembourg: July 20, 1983]
139. Cliff Sheehan (Harvard), 3:59.2 [Philadelphia: April 27, 1985]
167. Greg Whiteley (Brown), 3:59.15 [Westwood: June 10, 1989]
173. Bill Burke (Princeton), 3:58.70 i [New York: Feb. 1, 1991]
177. Bill Rathbun (Cornell^), 3:59.94 i [Boston: Feb. 16, 1991]
191. Ronnie Harris (Navy^), 3:58.03 [Eugene: June 5, 1993]
192. Bob Lesko (Yale^), 3:58.23 [Eugene: June 5, 1993]
212. Dan Browne (Army), 3:59.37 i [Annapolis: Feb. 1, 1997]
219. Darin Shearer (Harvard^), 3:59.76 [Falmouth: Aug. 16, 1997]
227. Scott Anderson (Princeton^), 3:59.80 [Brunswick: July 4, 1998]
261. Aaron Lanzel (Navy^), 3:59.88 [Eugene: June 19, 2004]
296. Ben True (Dartmouth), 3:59.99 [Cambridge: June 17, 2007]
315. Liam Boylan-Pett (Columbia^), 3:59.40 i [University Park: Jan. 31, 2009]
343. Kyle Merber (Columbia), 3:58.52 i [New York: March 5, 2010]

^ Indicates that they managed their first sub-four after college. The ‘i’ following the time indicates that the debut sub-four was achieved indoors.

Four of the first five runners mentioned in the USATF’s post-race coverage of the NACAC Cross Country Championships from Tobago were former Ivy League performers. Here’s the opening graphs of story (with schools replacing the city of the participant):

Delilah DiCrescenzo (Columbia) and Max King (Cornell) each won the individual open women’s and men’s titles to lead Team USA to the respective open team titles Saturday at the sixth annual North America, Central America and Caribbean Athletic Association Cross Country Championships at the Mt. Irvine Resort in Tobago.

The NACAC Championships contested races for the open men’s 8k, open women’s 6k, junior men’s 6k and junior women’s 4k.

King took charge early to win the open men’s 8 km in 23 minutes, 49 seconds, leading the U.S. squad to a perfect score of 10 points. Michael Spence (Princeton) finished 17 seconds behind King for the runner-up position while Bobby Mack and Thomas Kloos (Columbia) rounded out the scoring places for Team USA, running 24:26 and 24:34 for third and fourth-place respectively.

(Hat tip: Mary Boggs)