The Binghamton University track and field team restarted its season at the Syracuse Invitational Jan. 18 with several individual first-place finishes for the men and the women.

Although this competition was a non-scoring meet, both the men’s and the women’s teams had more than 15 athletes place in the top three in their events. This was the first meet since Dec. 5 and head coach Mike Thompson was pleased with his team’s performance.

“Overall, they did well for the first meet back from the break,” Thompson said. “I felt that in general everybody looked good and kind of where they should be.”

The team as a whole did well in its events, but the most impressive was the 4 x 400 relays, in which the men and the women both placed first. In the men’s relays, freshman Zach Keefer stood out to Thompson, for his performance in the 500-meter race as well as the 4 x 400.

“I thought that probably Zach Keefer had the best performance overall,” Thompson said. “Keefer’s performance stood out the most. He ran extremely well in the 500 and in the 4-by-4 relay. He actually looked like he was in mid-season form.”

The women were not short of talent this week either. The standout player from this meet was Kaitlin Sullivan, a sophomore who came in first in the 55 hurdles and, according to Thompson, performed as if the season were already half over.

“Kaitlin Sullivan had another solid race in the hurdles,” Thompson said. “On the women’s side I would say Sullivan had the best performance. She looked like she’s in mid-season form too, which is good. Hopefully by mid-season or the end of the season she’ll be a lot faster than she was last year.”

It is interesting to note that both of Thompson’s picks for best players are underclassmen. The freshmen and sophomores are stepping up this season and have already started recording first-place finishes in their respective events, with players such as freshman Jessica Hennig and sophomore Abigail Oakes. Of the new talent this year, Thompson is optimistic about their potential, though recognizes that this time in the season is not ideal for gauging success.

“I thought they looked good,” Thompson said of his younger athletes. “Zach Keefer’s a freshman. Dustin Ross looked very good, Casey Gilbert looked good, those guys are all quarter-milers. I thought the freshman were good … We have a very large group, we have over 20 freshman guys on the team. As a whole they don’t look too bad … they’re just really sore from coming back and jumping right back into it. So we’ll see. The first week they looked OK, but ask me again in a month and we’ll see.”

After this jump-start back into track season, the Bearcats have a packed schedule coming up, with three more meets just in January. The next one was scheduled to take place on Friday, Jan. 22 at the Great Dane Invitational in New York City.

This meet will be the first of the season to incorporate team scoring, but Thompson is not overly worried about the team’s performance, given its return after almost six weeks of break and a very difficult week of training that left some team members sore. Many people are not attending because they need to rest up for the next two meets quickly approaching this month. For Thompson, the athletes remaining healthy and strong are his top priorities.

“I would like to get through that meet healthy,” Thompson said of the upcoming meet, “because the team as a whole is really sore right now. We had a hard week of training this week and a lot of people have some minor little nagging bumps and bruises … I really have no expectations other than staying healthy and getting the few people we have that are a little beat up back to being healthy. Overall I think they looked good or better than good, which in a first meet is good to see.”