A pair of individual wins as well as two school records highlighted the two-day Division III New England Men's Track & Field Championship hosted by Tufts, as the Panthers finished in fourth place, the highest spot during the meet in the men's history. Middlebury recorded 79 points out of 27 teams scoring, as the host Jumbos claimed the team title with 127 points ahead of runner-up Williams with 92 and MIT with 84. All-New England Division III honors were awarded to the top-eight finishers in each event. The Panthers return to the track next Friday when they take part in the Open New England Championships hosted by Boston University.
The Panther men picked up two individual event wins in the meet. Jimmy Martinez raced to the finish line with a facility-record time of 48.65 in the 400-meter dash, while Kevin Serrao claimed the mile run in 4:14.34. Teammate Jonathan Perlman was right behind with a runner-up finish of 4:14.36.
A few events earlier, Serrao lowered his own school record in the 1,000-meter run, stopping the clock with a runner-up time of 2:27.12. That betters his mark of 2:29.65 set back during the Middlebury Winter Classic. In the same event, Ascencion Aispuro finished sixth in 2:30.97.
For his efforts, Serrao was selected as the Gordon Kelly Track Athlete of the Meet.
The second school record was posted by Jonathan Fisher with 4,084 points in the heptathlon, erasing the total of 4,064 set by James Lynch a year ago. Fisher's point total was good for eighth place.
Other individual All-New England efforts were tallied by James Mulliken in the 800-meter run (2nd, 1:54.16), Nathan Hill during the 600-meter run (3rd, 1:22.49) and Connor Evans in the 3,000-meter run (6th, 8:36.29).
The 4x800-meter relay team of Evans, Aispuro, Hill and Mulliken claimed the runner-up spot with a time of 7:54.35, while the 4x400-meter relay quartet of Nicholas Hendrix, Serrao, Martinez and Alex Nichols was third (3:21.19). Rounding out the highlights on the track was the distance medley relay comprised of Will Meyer, Benjamin Hill, Andrew Michelson and Perlman with a fifth-place time of 10:28.22.
Off the track, John Natalone cleared the pole vault bar with a fifth-place showing of 14'11".
