Earlier this week, the Binghamton men’s and women’s track and field teams competed at the America East (AE) indoor track and field championships in Boston, Massachusetts. Over the span of two days, several Bearcats earned numerous first place results and all-conference honors en route to a second place overall finish for the women and a third place result for the men over the nine team field.

“The expectation was that everybody would compete as well and as hard as they could,” Binghamton head coach Mike Thompson said. “If you do that, then things tend to just take care of themselves, and that absolutely happened. On the women’s side, especially, it was one of the greatest meets we’ve ever had. They so outperformed where they were seeded coming in that it was really impressive.”

The first day of action saw commanding performances in the field events from BU. Leaping into the AE record books was sophomore Alyssa Armitage, whose distance of 13-3.5 in the women’s pole vault shattered the meet record and secured her first career AE gold medal. The men’s pole vault also saw a Bearcat on the top of the pylon — senior Brandon Love secured his first career indoor AE gold and second overall with a height of 15-9. Lastly, locking down first and second place in the weight throw were redshirt freshman Brian Luciano and junior Jaston Ormsby with respective throws of 67-10.25 and 63-4, with Luciano’s result breaking the school record for the fourth time this season.

“Huge throws by the throwers [Luciano] and [Ormsby],” Thompson said. “The pole vaulters did well — [Armitage], of course,”

On the track side of day one, the quartet of freshman Vicky Mordvinova, juniors Jessica Prentice and Zoe Rose and graduate student Sophia Ryan stood on top of the podium in the women’s distance medley relay with a time of 11:47.26. The most memorable moment of the meet, however, came from senior Josh Stone. Competing in the 5,000m race, Stone mounted a late comeback on the home stretch to narrowly beat his Maine adversary at the line by one hundredth of a second to secure his first career track crown with a final time of 14:38.19. When day one’s scores were tallied, both the men and women sat in first place on the leaderboards.

“To win a 5,000m race by one hundredth of a second is very exciting,” Thompson said. “It could have gone either way and it worked in [Stone’s] favor. That was definitely one of the highlights of the whole meet not just because he won, but because it was so dramatic. It just makes great entertainment, honestly.”

On day two, freshman Brynn Hogan, junior Jennifer Mui, Rose and Ryan netted gold — earning the top result in the 4×800 relay, clocking in a time of 9:14.42. Relay gold was also secured on the men’s side of the action, with senior Marcus Johnson, sophomore Samson Joseph and juniors Oliver Madariaga and Joey Cardascia clocking in at 3:13.66 to nab first in the 4×400 relay. The final Binghamton victory of the meet came in the women’s 500m race — courtesy of junior Hillary Abankwa, whose time of 1:13.62 was good enough to secure Abankwa her first career AE individual crown. Day two was also characterized by the depth of the Bearcats, with a total of 10 additional podium placements secured on the day across both sides.

“Everybody stepped up,” Thompson said. “We had great performances in the hurdles, in the sprints, in the jumps, in the throws [and] in the distance events. We take pride in having a complete track team. Not just a lot of sprinters or a lot of distance people, but we cover every event group and they all stepped up.”

By the end of the meet, both of Binghamton’s squads found themselves on the overall podium with the women in second with 134 points and the men in third with 119.50 points. For their efforts, several Bearcats earned awards — Armitage was named most outstanding women’s field athlete, Luciano earned men’s most outstanding rookie honors and, in recognition of both her academic and athletic achievements, Rose secured the women’s elite 18 award. Lastly, for the first time in a decade Thompson and his staff was awarded women’s coaching staff of the year.

“With coaching awards, it just means that your team performed really well,” Thompson said. “That’s the exciting thing about that. So it’s nice to get the award, but it’s really just a testament to how well the team performed as a whole.”

The Bearcats are set to return to Boston next weekend to compete in the ECAC/IC4A Championships, stemming from Friday, March 1 to Sunday, March 3. First event is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Boston University Track and Tennis Center in Boston, Massachusetts.