The men’s and women’s track and field squads enjoyed successful showings at both the Continental Invitational hosted by Hamilton and the Sam Howell Invitational hosted by Princeton. Five Raider runners garnered personal-best times in the two meets.

The men’s team started off the weekend first by participating in the Continental Invitational. First-year Tom Hedges stole the show for the Colgate team, winning the 5,000 meter run with a personal-best time of 15:53.13. Thanks to the tutelage of first-year assistant coach Luke Burdick, a former collegiate distance runner at SUNY Plattsburgh, Hedges was the only Raider to crack the tape all weekend.

“It means a lot that I ran a personal best,” Hedges said. “[Burdick] is ninety percent of the reason I’ve improved so much. He genuinely cares about helping the distance squad to train better, knows what it means to be a runner and understands the science of the sport.”

The Sam Howell Invitational was the second meet of the weekend, and both the men’s and women’s teams took part. The men were headlined by three top-10 finishes. Sophomore Dan Gleason took sixth place in the 1,500 meter run with a time of 4:05.48. He managed to finish just two seconds from the third finisher. In the 800-meter run first-year Tim Metivier finished in 10th place with a time of 1:57.72. Like Gleason, Metivier came within two seconds of moving way up in the final standings, this time all the way up to fifth place. Finally the men placed sophomore Gus Hobbs within the top 10, at tenth, in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 57.80.

The women also enjoyed success on the weekend, even breaking some Colgate records in the process. The 5,000-meter run started the women off on the right foot, as both sophomore Julie Tarallo and first-year Kelly Cattano placed themselves in the Colgate record books with strong performances. Tarallo had the fourth-fastest time ever, at 18:01.02, while Cattano was right behind her with the fifth-fastest, at 18:08.23.

The women’s 4×100 team also had a good showing this past weekend, coming in third, but it was more about the individual performance for the 4×100 participants on this day. Sophomore Michele Miller, one of the participants, also ran the 400-meter dash, finishing third with a time of 57.85, just 0.39 off her personal-best. Junior Ashley Niness, another participant, turned in the seventh fastest time in Colgate history for the 400-meter hurdles at 1:07.77. The third runner in the 4×100 who had a good individual day was senior Curry Knox, who turned in the fastest Colgate time ever in the 100-meter hurdles, finishing fourth in the event.

So although the men and women may not have brought back many first-place finishes, rewriting the record books was quite impressive in its own right.