Binghamton University’s track and field teams competed in the outdoor America East Championships over the weekend hosted by Maine.

The men’s team finished third out of the nine-team field while the women placed sixth. Albany won the men’s meet, while Boston University finished first on the women’s side.

“When you go to a championship meet, you are going to have some events where you do a little better than you thought going in and some events that you don’t do quite as well as you thought,” said Binghamton head coach Mike Thompson. “We had a few events like that, but didn’t have any unbelievable good or bad. We were very steady and did what we were supposed to going in.”

While the teams may have not have been “unbelievable,” there were some great individual performances.

Freshman Cazal Arnett was named the men’s Rookie of the Meet as he broke the conference record in the 400-meter dash. His time of 47.04 broke the old mark of 47.24 set by Matt Adler of Boston University in 2002. Arnett also won the Rookie of the Meet award at the AE Indoor Championships back in February and swept the AE indoor and outdoor titles for the 2008 season.

Arnett joined fellow freshman Christian Smith and juniors Jimmy Massar and Junior Obionwu in the 1,600-meter relay to clock a winning time of 3:15.45. Arnett came from 15 yards behind on the anchor leg to pull out a .03-second victory over the team from Albany.

“We expected that he [Arnett] would run well because he is very consistent, level headed, shows up at practice and trains well and runs well,” Thompson said. “We didn’t do anything differently — we have a training plan that we follow and he followed that plan and he did the work and ended up running really well.”

Junior Justin Halleck also shined as he captured the men’s hammer with a distance of 185-0. Halleck now has won two career AE individual titles, having also won the weight throw at the indoor meet earlier in the year.

Other top performers on the men’s team included senior Kris Yelverton who finished second in the pole vault (15-9), junior Joanel Lopez who was second in the shot put (522.75), sophomore Kevin Ralston placed third in the long jump (23-2) and junior Justin Hidalgo was third in the hammer (166-11).

On the women’s side, junior Carly Gross was second in the pole vault (10-10), followed by sophomore Kiki Gifft in third (10-4) and senior Katie Wilmer in fourth place.

Junior Kim Williams, who struggled with injury earlier in the year, placed second in the women’s 200-meter dash (20.41).

“Kim ran well in the 200 and relays so it was good to see her back,” Thompson said. “The women had a good meet, we just needed to get a few more points in a few events to get us up another place. We just don’t have enough bodies to finish in the top three or so.”

Binghamton will travel next to the ECAC/IC4A Championships hosted by Princeton, May 16 to 18.