M. Track finishes behind Princeton

Despite six first-place finishes, the men's indoor track team failed to amass enough points to repeat as Heptagonal Champions. This year Princeton earned the honor, as the Tigers scored 138 points. Penn finished second with 115, which put them 44 points ahead of third-place Brown. The 1998 Indoor Heps showed itself as a two-team race from the onset. After the first day of competition, Princeton -- who hosted the meet -- and Penn already had grabbed a solid hold of the two lead spots. "Usually you get 10 to 15 points for home field advantage," Penn senior Mike Stiffler said. "Many upperclassmen felt we should have won the meet, if we were, to use the cliche, running on all cylinders." But the Quakers are accustomed to competing on the road, as Penn does not possess an indoor track. Penn's standout runners continued their road dominance, shown by four first-place finishes this weekend, including Shawn Fernandes' win in the 55 meter dash by three-hundreths of a second with his time of 6.44 seconds. In the 400 meter dash, Mike Stiffler and Brown's Trinity Gray both finished with a time of 48.63 seconds. But a photo finish indicated that Stiffler won the race. "I had to make a quick spurt for the lead at the 150 meter break," Stiffler said. "I was pretty much leading throughout the race, and then I saw Trinity on my right at the last meter." Robin Martin took the Quakers' other top finishes on the track. Martin defeated Harvard's Joseph Ciollo by two-tenths of a second. Martin's second win was even a closer call. Martin beat Gray by five-hundreths of a second in the 1,000 meter run with a time of 2:24.17. The duo are two of the nation's top runners, as exemplified by their sub-1:49 runs in the 800 meter run earlier in the season. Penn also won two field events -- the weight throw and the triple jump. Lucas Deines' weight throw of 63 feet and 4.00 inches was over four feet further than the second-best throw at Princeton, which came from Dartmouth's Shaun McGregor. For the second consecutive year, the Red and Blue continued their dominance of the triple jump event. At the 1997 Heps, they scored 25 points by having five of the top six jumps. This year they took four of the top six spots -- including Stan Anderson's first-place finish -- accumulating 17 of the 31 possible points in the event. Penn's accomplishments at Jadwin Gym were very impressive, as they have been all season long. Going into the competition, the Quakers were a solid contender, especially considering they were defending champions. "We felt it was our meet to win or lose," Stiffler said. "We'll get them outdoors." Unfortunately, 1998 was not Penn's year in the Indoor Heps, but Penn will get a rematch with Princeton in the spring at the Outdoor Heps. The Quakers' season continues next weekend at Cornell, where its top athletes will compete in the IC4As.

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