UTICA, NY (January 29, 2022) - The Delhi men's and women's track and field team made their third and final of the season to Utica College for an Invitational. The men piled up 52 total points across seven different events to take fourth place in the 16 team meet, while the women scored eight points from three different events to place 11th.
The big highlight came from the men's 400 meters where Joshua Jeffes broke the seven year old school record in the 400 meters. Jeffes won the event with a time of 49.32 which will replace the 49.60 performance that Romaine Angel posted back in 2014. Jeffes went straight to the lead coming through the 200 meter split in 23.77 seconds and powered away from the field in the second lap to win the race by nearly two and a half seconds. The time qualifies Jeffes for the AARTFC Championships in March and currently ranks as the third fastest time in the country for NCAA Division III.
Meanwhile in the race behind Jeffes, teammate Brennan Frascello ran a fantastic second circuit to move up three places to finish in third place overall. Jeffes and Frascello then teamed up with Aidan Cutting and Seth Bywater to place second in the distance medley relay with Cutting running the 1200, Frascello the 400, Jeffes the 800 and Bywater the 1600 meter leg.
Bywater had a big individual performance as well winning the 5,000 meters with his second personal best of 2022 in the distance. Bywater led all 25 laps from start to finish and closed the last 200 meters in a fast 30 second lap to shave nine more seconds off his AARTFC Championship qualifying time from two weeks ago. The time of 15:20.69 ranks as the number six performance in program history and the third fastest time of the season in the All-Atlantic Region.
Also performing well again for the men were hurdlers Mickenson Simon (8.92) and Morgan Condon (9.12) Who placed fourth and sixth in the 60 meter hurdles race. Both athletes made huge improvement on their previous best times. Lewis Race added a solid sixth place finish in the 800 meters with his time of 2:04.82.
For the women, Kadie-Ann Whyte continued to return to form dropping another big chunk of time to place sixth in the 60 meter dash with a new lifetime best of 8.19 seconds from the preliminary round and backed it up with an 8.20 performance in the final. Whyte's previous best was 8.276 seconds. In the 3,000 meters, Kristina Messler placed sixth overall with a time of 12:03.35. Over in the throwing circles, Kitty Messina continued to throw well. She placed eighth in the shot put throwing 10.83 meters and was eleventh in the weight throw with a toss of 12.47 meters.
The team will be back in action again next weekend with a meet at Ithaca College.
