A significant milestone was recorded last Saturday at the Penn State invitational when junior Erik van Ingen became the first athlete from Binghamton University to run the mile in under four minutes.

Breaking records is not new to van Ingen, who held the previous school record in the mile, which he set last March.

When asked about the race, van Ingen was modest, explaining that he just tried to capture the lead, and once he did he wouldn’t let go.

“I just tucked in a couple places behind the pace-setter and just took my position,” he said. “With about 300 meters left, I took the lead and just started running for broke to try to make it through to the tape and it was under four minutes, fortunately.”

This achievement was just one of the impressive performances, according to head coach Mike Thompson, who was greatly pleased with his team at this meet, especially van Ingen.

“I thought the meet went extremely well,” Thompson said. “I think that that’s the best we have looked as a whole at that meet since we started going there six years ago. [Van Ingen’s performance] was really exciting. The four-minute mile is probably the greatest barrier in track and field, so to have someone at Binghamton accomplish it was tremendous.”

Other notable athletes from the meet include freshman Jeff Martinez, who set the school record in the 3,000. As far as the women are concerned, freshman Jessica Hennig helped her 4 by 400 relay team place 14th and qualify for the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships.

“Everybody performed well; nobody performed poorly,” Thompson noted. “Some people performed exceptionally well, but as a whole the team did really well.”

After coming back from winter break and training hard, the team and the season have finally kicked into gear, and the Bearcats are ready to face their biggest challenges approaching later in the season.

“People are starting to feel fit and strong again,” Thompson said. “So I think things look good. This week will be a pretty hard week of training and then the next couple weeks leading into conference we’ll tone it down a little bit and I think people will feel fresh and regenerated in three weeks when we go to conference.”

In addition to the Penn State Invitational, some members of the track and field team went to Colgate for a meet on the same day. The women came in second and the men came in fifth, and there were three first-place finishers: freshman Casey Gilbert in the 400, sophomore Kaitlin Sullivan in the 60 hurdles and junior Nandi Dozier-Lewis for the triple jump.

Though there was no team scoring incorporated at the Penn State meet, each day counts in preparing for the conference meet in mid-February, and the Penn State and Colgate meets were no exceptions.

“We’re looking to get some really fast times in the next couple meets going into conference just to set us up for that meet,” Thompson said about his team’s plan for the rest of the season. “That’s the most important meet for most people on the team. Everything we do from now until then is to prepare us for that meet. Mainly we just want to do well in conference.”

More serious competitors such as van Ingen and junior Cazal Arnett are training for nationals as well, which makes the upcoming meets more important than ever.

Van Ingen’s mile time of 3:59.58 puts him just over the automatic qualifying time for the NCAA championships, which is 3:59.00, but it does place him in the provisional qualifying category.

“I’m excited to move on to the next thing,” van Ingen said. “[Breaking the four-minute mile] has taken a lot of stress off, so now I can worry about running other events and focusing in on nationals in March and doing well there.”

Arnett also performed well at the meet, placing fifth in the 400 and leading his 4 by 400 relay team to a seventh place finish.

Both athletes will be looking to the two meets this weekend to help them solidify their seasons. With a Collegiate Invitational in New York City and the Syracuse Invitational both rapidly approaching, Thompson knows that his Bearcats need to train hard and be ready to move up the ladder in anticipation for conference play.

“We’re hoping for some really big things in New York City,” Thompson said. “Van Ingen is running the 3,000 there, I know he would like to qualify for nationals in the 3,000. Arnett’s goal is to at least get the provisional NCAA qualifying standard in the 400 there. We also have a lot of our distance guys going there trying to get fast and then we’re running our 400 and 500 meter runners as well. Overall everyone is just looking to better their times and improve their standings going into conference.”