Jan. 20, 2007
MARIETTA, Ohio - The Ohio men's and women's track and field teams competed at the Marietta Open Saturday afternoon. In the second indoor meet of the season, the women, led by the underclassmen, finished second while the men, led by an outstanding long jump performance by Scott Mayle, took fourth at the Marietta College Dyson Baudo Recreation Center.
The meet included 16 teams on the women's side and 15 teams on the men's side. Ashland University took first in the women's competition with 211.83 points. Ohio followed with 115.50 points, defeating Roanoke with 99.33 points. Finishing in the top three in the men's meet were Ashland University with 154.50 points, Morehead State with 126 points and Lynchburg with 93.20 points.
"Overall, we did not finish where we wanted to as a team, but if you look at the individual performances a lot of good things happened," said Head Coach Clay Calkins.
The Ohio women captured 15 individual top-five finishes, including nine from the freshman class, while the men captured seven top-five finishes.
"This meet was a good showing for the near future. The freshman performed very well, which was what we were hoping for with this recruiting class," Calkins said.
The performance of the meet definitely belonged to senior Scott Mayle, who took home a victory in the long jump event by hitting the provisional NCAA qualifying mark. Mayle, who recently concluded his last season on the Bobcat football team, jumped 7.73m (25-04.50) surpassing the provisional mark of 7.50m. The automatic NCAA indoor qualifying mark is 7.85m.
The men posted good finishes in the other jumping events as well, with sophomore Jordan Sharpe taking second in the high jump (6-02.75) and Mike Goodrich finishing third in the pole vault (14-06.00). In addition, sophomore Kevin Kappers took home second in the 500-meter dash (1.09.31) and senior Eric Bildstein posted a third place finish in the weight throw (55-00.75).
On the women's side, youth led the charge with sophomore Chanelle Harmon taking second in both the 55-meter dash and the 200-meter dash, while also helping the 4x200 relay squad finish second.
In the field events, Bobcat freshman Ashlee Reynolds, Christen Bosch and Bahiyjaui Allen were the stars. Reynolds finished second in the high jump (5-03.00), Bosch took home second in the pole vault (10-06.00) and Allen placed second in the shot put (43-07.25). Following closely behind Allen in the shot put, freshman Emily Amendola finished third (42-11.00) and sophomore Jessica Tanner took fourth (39-11.25). Freshman Kelley O'Brien also contributed to the team by placing second in the 3000-meter run.
Next on the slate for the Bobcats is the Penn State Invitational January 26-27 in State College, Pa.
