The men’s track and field team dominated this weekend in the IC4A Championship at Boston University. (File photo/The Daily Campus)
The men’s track and field team dominated this weekend in the IC4A Championship at Boston University, a three-day-long series of events with schools from all over the northeast participating. The men did not disappoint, just one week ahead of the NCAA National Championship.
The events started on Friday with the Heptathlon that would lead into Saturday. For the Heptathlon, sophomore Benjamin Grosse proved to everyone why he is one of the team’s most important members as he placed first. Against six other individuals from different schools, he finished third in the 60-meter dash, first in the long jump, third in shotput and first in high jump. On Saturday, he had three more trials, finishing second in the 60-meter hurdles, second in the 100-meter run and third in the pole vault. With the combination of all top three finishes, Grosse pulled out a huge victory for UConn.
The rest of Saturday’s events consisted of preliminary events for track and final events for the field. Sophomore Claxton Daniels finished first in his final high jump event with a high score of 2.17 meters. Senior Kyle Barber finished second in his first heat preliminary mile run with a time just above four minutes.
In the last event of the championship, Senior Ian Bergere finished fourth in the finals for pole vault, adding key points to UConn’s final total.
For the last event, UConn won in the four by 400-meter relay event that secured them the victory. Even more notably, of the four runners in the final, three of them were freshmen and the other a sophomore. Coach Greg Roy has always attested to the strength of his young talent and they proved it once again.
UConn will now be faced with an even tougher challenge. Next weekend, they’ll be flying out to Birmingham, Alabama, for the NCAA national championship. The men will be under a lot of pressure, but their performance in the IC4A proved that they are ready for the biggest of all stages.
Daniel Dashefsky is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached at daniel.dashefsky@uconn.edu.
