Last weekend, the Rowan University men’s track & field team weathered the storm and continued to blaze through their competition at the Larry Ellis Invitational held at Princeton University.
On Friday, April 14, Greg Poloso bettered his Division III mark in the javelin with a toss of 69.23 meters, which was good enough for second place in the event.
Before the rain on Saturday, the team’s 4×100 relay clocked in with the fastest time in Division III with a time of 40.84. The team of Shamar Love, Evan Corcoran, Jah’mere Beasley and Nana Agyemang, just barely missed the school record of 40.82.
Kwaku Nkrumah and Marquise Young also improved in the hurdles, with Nkrumah moving up to No. 13 in Division III with a time of 14.60 and Young running his fastest time this season at 14.67.
“Everything was good for the races we had,” Head Coach Dustin Dimit said. “We were really excited. We were upset we couldn’t get more in because everyone was feeling good after seeing people run fast in the morning and the night before. We’re happy with what we got out of it and hope to carry that momentum into this weekend at South Carolina.”
Poor weather has been a trend for the team this season but they know what they’re capable of and are looking to pick up where they left off last weekend before the storms hit.
“We just knew that people were ready to go,” Dimit said. “They were excited and it would have been some good times. They know that and we’ll do the same thing hopefully this weekend with high 70s and sunshine in Columbia.”
After the 4×100 team just missed out on breaking the 20-year-old school record, Coach Dimit is expecting them to chase it for the remainder of the season and hopes that they can get it to further solidify their legacies on the track.
“It’s definitely a goal there,” Dimit said. “They know how close they are to it and they’re excited to try and go after it again this weekend and have a lot of these guys with all of those records. Two or three of them were on the 4×4 last year and three of the four are on the 4×2 so it would be nice to have them do that and see that for some of these guys to have all of these records together. They’re good enough to do it. The weather and the competition will hopefully help them get that.”
After they broke the indoor national record, the 4×400 team, and Coach Norm Tate, announced that their next goal was to have both records and they circled the USC Open at South Carolina on their calendars as the chance to do it. Now with the USC Open here, the expectation is to walk out of there with two records instead of one.
“Our goal is to break the school record in both and if it’s a good day, hopefully go after national records in both as well,” Dimit said. “I don’t think either of them are out of our reach, they’re both very good records, they have existed for a long time and a lot of really good teams just missed getting them.”
Those expectations do not rattle the team at all. In fact, Love is looking forward to it and expects them to get things done to reach their goals.
“The expectation is to go there to get things done,” Love said. “To go there with a winning mentality and come out with both records.”
Dimit knows exactly what needs to happen in order to get things done but knows that this week isn’t their one and only chance at doing it.
“I feel like we have three guys who can run 46 [seconds] and if Marquise can lead off with a 48 then we’ll be right in the mix for that outdoor record,” Dimit said. “If not, we’ll go after it at Penn and if not we’ll go after it at nationals. We know we are capable of it, now we just need to get into a race that will help us do it.”
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