LANCASTER, Pa. – The Haverford College men's indoor track & field team got championship performances in thrilling fashion from Graham Peet in the 5,000 meters and another championship run from the distance medley relay on Saturday at the Centennial Conference Championships. The Fords scored 35 points as a team and are sitting in second place behind Dickinson heading into day two of the conference championship.
Graham Peet repeated his 2016 championship run in the 5,000 meters as he crossed the line in a time of 14:45.11. Peet was neck-and-neck with his closest competitor from Dickinson down the stretch, but outkicked him in the final five meters to claim his third individual Centennial Conference Track Championship as he also won the steeplechase during the 2018 outdoor meet. The Fords have now won the 5,000 meter indoor race in four straight seasons and 19 times in the conference's 26 year history. Peet joined Don Letts '08 (who won it three times) as the only Haverford runner to win that event in multiple years. Ryan Herlihy added a fifth-place showing in the 5,000 meters as he crossed the line in 15:03.46.
Haverford also got a great anchor leg from Greg Morgan in the DMR as he ran down Johns Hopkins' anchor in the final mile after starting off 100 meters behind him entering the final leg. Haverford's DMR finished in a time of 10:15.87, nearly four seconds faster than its closest competition at the finish line. Chris Goings, Hiroshi Kawakatsu, and Ian Woodhouse were also on that winning relay. Goings and Lynch were repeats from the 2018 DMR championship relay at the conference meet. Today's win marked the 18th time Haverford has won that event during the Centennial Conference indoor championships.
The Fords added a fifth-place finish to their day in the 4x200 relay with the team of Liam Lynch, Kofi Acheampong, Oscar Huang, and Peter Kurtz. Haverford's 4x200 relay finished in a time of 1:34.63, nearly two and a half seconds faster than its seed time.
First-year Ethan Gadra led Haverford in the field events as he set a college PR in the pole vault by clearing 4.25 meters (13'-11.25"). That mark beats his previous best from this season by four inches to solidify his third spot in the College's record books. Zach Oji also scored in the triple jump as his height cleared was a season-best 12.00 meters (39'4.5") to place eighth overall. Rohan Shukla (11.98 meters; 39'-3.75") was ninth.
Also in position to score points in the finals on Sunday are Acheampong and Cameron Albrecht. Acheampong set a new personal best in the 60 meter dash and is now just one-hundredth of a second off of the College record as he crossed the line in a time of 7.20 seconds. That mark was sixth in the heats. The 60 meter finals will be contested on Sunday afternoon. Albrecht is in fifth place in the heptathlon after day one with a score of 1,987 points. His big scoring event for the day was the 60 meter dash as he finished in 7.83 seconds.
The 2019 Centennial Conference Indoor Track & Field Championships will continue into Sunday. The first men's event on the schedule will be Albrecht's as the heptathlon 60 meter hurdles will get underway at 11 a.m. on the track. The final event, the men's 4x400 relay, is slated for a 3:45 p.m. start to close the championship weekend.