Midseason Track and Field Review: Berliant and Tavé Lead Top Performers
The first month of the outdoor track season ended with several CMS athletes setting school and national marks.
Taylor Berliant, a junior from Sudbury MA, surpassed his 2009 third place NCAA hammer distance of 183’5” to establish a best of 196’5”, which currently ranks second in the NCAA. Berliant’s mark surpassed Mike Susank’s junior class record from 1993 of 194’5”. Berliant has also pushed the shot out to 52’7 ½” to become the fourth best putter in CMS history.
Also in the field, a quartet of Athenas all vaulted over 10’, which was the first time in SCIAC competition that any school had four women over that height in the same competition. What made the occurrence for Lauren Yeske (So), Koko Huang (Fr), Melia Plotkin (So) and Jessica Dang (Fr) even more impressive is they accomplished the feat in a light rain. Reny Colton, a sophomore attending Claremont McKenna, has been the conference leader in the horizontal jumps, having established two PRs thus far – 18’1 ¾” in the long jump and 37’8 ¾” in the triple jump. Her triple jump mark is an NCAA provisional performance.
On the track, sophomore Jennifer Tavé, in her first collegiate track season, leads the nation in the 10k. Jennifer chased NAIA defending national champion from Azusa Pacific to the number two time ever recorded by a CMS Athena of 36:04. Jennifer also won the steeplechase (her first) in 11:36.54, as well as the 5k in 18:11.12 vs. La Verne and Whittier College on March 5th.
The Stags are led on the track by four athletes. In the sprints, Mike Carroll (So) has the team’s fastest times in the 100 (11.21), 200 (22.26) and 400 (49.83) as well as running critical legs on the conference’s leading relay teams. Georgi Dinolov, a junior at Harvey Mudd, has posted the two best middle distance times thus far, 1:55.28 for the 800 and 3:58.14 for the 1500. Another junior, Brian Kopczynski, has the Stag’s fastest times in the 3k at 8:44.05 and the 5k with a blistering 14:46.30, which places him as the fastest junior in the event in CMS history. The top track senior this year, Florian Scheulen, has the team’s best marks in the steeplechase at 9:41.44 and the 10k at 31:26.19. His 10k time moves him into the number five all-time spot for the Stags.
Several freshmen have done stellar jobs thus far, including Jeff Vignos, Jeff MacDonald, Quinn Chasan, Kyle Hansen, Rafer Dannenhauer and Brian Sutter, who on March 12th set the freshman record for the 5k, running a strong 15:06.79 to replace Eli Klovee-Smith’s 15:12.13 in the record books. The Athenas have had outstanding performances for freshmen as well, with Madeline Sheldon, Carmen Lundell, Koko Huang and Laura Wyatt, who leads the team in the 800 at 2:23 and the 1500 in 4:53.42. This is Laura’s first attempt in that event and she’s undefeated (three meets) in the 800m.
