Over the weekend, the Binghamton track and field teams competed at the Sykes & Sabock Challenge in University Park, Pennsylvania. The teams produced three first-place finishers and several top-10 finishes despite the lack of team scoring at the event.

“I feel like about half of the team is right on track and doing really well and I feel like the other half isn’t quite there yet,” said Binghamton head coach Mike Thompson. “So hopefully in the next couple of weeks everybody will get on the same page and we’ll be good going into conference.”

Graduate student Jenna Chan competed in the 60 hurdles and finished with a time of 8.35. Chan’s distance in the event broke her own school record, earning her a first-place finish. Another standout performer was junior Alyssa Armitage in the pole vault, where she took home silver with a distance of 13-1.5. In addition, sophomore Kaya Duran finished third in the 500 with a time of 1:24.13. Senior Lucciana Robertson also took home bronze in the high jump with a distance of 5-7.25.

“It was a great race for [Chan],” Thompson said. “She’d been running kind of the same times for most of the season, so it was good to see her finally have that one breakout race. So that was very exciting.”

On the men’s side in the weight throw was redshirt sophomore Brian Luciano, who finished first with a distance of 67-11. Graduate student Marcus Johnson also took home gold in the 500 with a time of 1:04.36. Sophomore Brennan Delany finished fourth in the 60 hurdles with distances of 8.26. Graduate student Oliver Madariaga also took home a fourth-place finish in the 400 with a time of 48.49.

“[Johnson] ran very well, and he has been running well, so that was nice to see,” Thompson said. “[Luciano], you know, he won, but for him, that was an average throw. 
I mean, he’s just better than most people, so I doubt he was happy with that performance even though he won, but he won’t compete until the conference meet. Now he’ll take this coming weekend off. He’s a gamer, I mean, he’s a great competitor, so I fully expect him to do very well in two weeks at the conference meet.”

Other standout performances from the meet include sophomore Putu Sutayasa, who finished fifth in the long jump with a distance of 22.25. Also finishing in fifth were sophomore Marcus Nahim and freshman Bobby Mayclim in the 60 and 3,000, with times of 6.92 and 8:24.58, respectively. In the weight throw, graduate student Gianna Hoose finished in fourth with a distance of 58-8.50. Sophomore Tatum Norris finished fifth in the 200 with a time of 24.88. Last, was sophomore Dami Modupe in the 60 hurdles, who finished fifth with a time of 8.77.

“I thought that Armitage, actually, even though she jumped what for her is kind of a typical height, she jumped very well,” Thompson said. “So sometimes, in the pole vault, you can jump really high, but still hit the bar and it comes off. And so she was jumping very well, and I was very excited about that moving forward. Sutayasa in the long jump, he had a couple of really big jumps that were foul. So even though his distance was average for him, you can tell that he’s ready to go and really hit a big jump.”

Along with those events, there were several other Bearcats who finished within the top-10 in their respective categories, such as sophomore Liam Cody, freshman Andrew Fasone, freshman Caleb Alexandre, junior Matthew Oluwole, and freshman Anna Gansrow. This weekend was a chance for Binghamton to continue its preparations for the America East (AE) Championship meet in two weeks.

“We will approach it like we always approach it,” Thompson said. “That’s to cut the volume back and let them rest and recover and high-intensity workouts, but put much lower volume and just hopefully they’ll feel, you know, well-rested when they get to the conference meeting two weeks.”

The Bearcats will head to Boston University to compete at the Valentine’s Invitational from Friday, Feb. 14. to Saturday, Feb. 15. First event is scheduled for 10 a.m. at Boston University Track & Tennis Center in Boston, Massachusetts.