Last Saturday, members of both the men’s and women’s track teams traveled to compete in separate meets. Junior Elise DeRoo jour­neyed out to northern California to take part in the Stanford University Invitational. The men’s team travelled down to Annapolis, Mary­land to take part in a meet hosted by the Navy Midshipmen. Both DeRoo and the men’s team represented Colgate well, posting very strong showings at their respective competitions.

DeRoo voyaged across the entire country to take part in the prestigious Stanford Invite and performed very well in it. The junior was matched up against tough competition from elite athletic conferences including, but not lim­ited to, the Big East, Pac-10, Big-10 and the Ivy League. DeRoo participated in her first outdoor 5000-meter run of the season and completed the event in a very respectable 16:43.61, good enough for tenth overall in her heat.

The men’s team competed well in its meet at Navy, placing second overall out of four teams. The Raiders finished the meet with a total of 84 points, trailing only Navy, who posted a domi­nant 258 team points. ‘Gate was followed in third place with 57 points by American Univer­sity. Colgate finished behind Navy mostly due to the physical number of athletes on Navy’s squad, but junior Graham Tooker, who broke a school record in the meet, noted that finishing second was a victory in itself for the Raiders.

“It felt particularly good to beat American since we are often very close to them in the Patriot League standings,” Tooker said. “Hope­fully that success will continue through to the Patriot League Championships.”

Several athletes had standout individual performances at the competition, most notably Tooker. The sprinter took home first place in the 100-meter dash with a Colgate record time of 10.31, posting nine team points for the Raiders.

“As for new benchmarks, I hope to be a strong contributor to our relays, particularly the 4×1[00] and 4×4[00], in pursuing Pa­triot League medals and Colgate records,” Tooker said.

Tooker followed up the dominant perfor­mance with another strong showing in the 200-meter dash. The experienced junior got out of the blocks quickly en route to a final time of 22.07. The time was good enough for second place in the event, and was just a tenth of a second behind the event winner, Alexander Jackson of Navy. Colgate received yet another top-3 performance in the last of the sprinting events, the 400-meter dash. Senior middle-distance runner Andy Smith placed second in the event with a final time of 50.02, and earned seven points for the Raiders in the process.

The squad experienced an uncharacteristic lull in the middle-distance and long-distance events, with the exception of the 3000-meter steeplechase. In his first ever attempt at the event, sophomore Chris Johnson placed second overall, posting a time of 9:33.15. The time was the third fastest in the Patriot League this sea­son. Colgate really began to pick up the pace in the medley events, posting a first and second place performance in the 4×100 and 4×400 meter relays, respectively. In the 4×100, Col­gate’s ‘A’ squad of junior Emmanuel Christian, sophomore Preston Hodge, sophomore Jason Hodge and Tooker won by default after Navy’s foursome was disqualified for an exchange out of the designated zone. In the 4×400 meter re­lay, Colgate’s ‘A’ squad of junior Tim Metivier, senior Jonathan Knowlton, Smith and Tooker placed second with a final time of 3:25.37.

The men’s and women’s teams will return to action this upcoming by participating in a meet hosted by Princeton University.