 "Photo: Daniel Mullins/Cardinal Points")
Finishing seventh out of eight teams competing at the indoor SUNYAC championships was not considered a good thing for the Plattsburgh State track teams.
But that was a season ago.
The teams will be using the under-achieving finish at indoors as motivation for competing well this weekend at outdoor SUNYACs in Oneonta.
“We had a young team in indoor, and with just an extra season of experience, the men’s team has rounded into good form,” Head Coach John Lynch said. “We should be a challenger for a top four finish if all goes right.”
At the Capital District Classic at RPI, Andrew Krug (high jump) and Schuyler Field (pole vault) posted ECAC qualifying times, which also qualify them for SUNYACs.
Sophomore Mike Heymann qualified for NCAAs at the Penn Relays last week, running the 10,000-meter in 30 minutes, 15.79 seconds.
He earned SUNYAC Track Athlete of the Week honors.
“Lynch had planned for me to go after a 10K time at Penn since March,” Heymann said. “All of my training this spring was building towards running a fast time at Penn. It was a deep field with a lot of talented runners that helped make it a fast race. Now we start working towards running fast in late May for nationals.”
Jenny Schaffhouser posted a time that provisionally qualified her for NCAA championships, also in the 10,000-meter.
She too earned Track Athlete of the Week.
“I fully expected them to get NCAA qualifying performances,” Lynch said. “Hard work equals success, and I cannot be happier that all their time and effort has been rewarded.”
Jacquelyn Boyea qualified for ECACs with a throw of 116 feet 1 inch in the javelin.
Felicia Sanges notched a SUNYAC qualifying mark of 4 feet 10.25 inches in the high jump.
The recent warm weather affects runners in different ways, Lynch said.
“The warm up has a positive effect on shorter duration events, and we saw improvements in those events this past weekend,” Lynch said. “For the long distance events, it is a lot tougher. It takes a very strong person mentally to push through 15 to 18 minutes of racing when its 90 degrees, and sometimes, even then, it’s impossible.”
Heymann said what happened a week after indoor SUNYACs is what the team has to think about this weekend.
“We under-performed at indoor SUNYAC,” he said. “A week later at ECACs, we took ninth out of 50 teams, beating four SUNYAC schools that we lost to the previous week. We know we could have done a lot better, and we want to prove it at SUNYACS this weekend.”
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