Rowan men’s indoor track and field has a tremendous chance to win the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) Championship for the tenth consecutive season. This year’s squad might just be the best one to date and they are clear frontrunners for the title meet next Monday, Feb. 19 in Staten Island, New York.
After two more well-rounded meets at both the Valentine Invitational in Boston and the Big Apple Invitational in Staten Island last weekend, the Profs are in prime shape to perform with excellence.
“We’re really happy with how things went there,” Head Coach Dustin Dimit said. “The four-by-four ran fast enough where they should get into nationals. Amara opened up faster than he ran last year at Boston. A bunch of other guys were running season bests and NJAC leading marks too… Definitely exciting to see so many guys performing well in our last regular season meet, especially before we get into this championship business.”
Jason Agyemang led off the 4x400m relay strong while recording one of his best times in the 60-meter hurdle at 8.11 seconds.
“It was one of my best races so far,” Agyemang said. “Everything felt pretty good. My start was a little slow but that’s all I’ve been working on so far. I feel pretty confident about these upcoming races.”
With the NJAC Championship on deck, Agyemang and the rest of the 60-meter hurdle group have high expectations. This whole group wants to finish ahead of everyone else racing, and with the times they’ve had compared to other NJAC schools, the writing is on the wall for this weekend.
“These are my people,” Agyemang said. “Every day out here at practice is like a race. We all want to win, and we all want to go out and run sevens. Every day is a competition.”
Competing with each other at such a high level every day has positioned this group to dominate the rest of the hurdling fields throughout this season.
“My expectations for the NJACs are that we all go out and finish top five,” Agyemang said. “We’re just going to handle business, and we might break the school record back-to-back a couple of times. We’ll see what happens.”
The Profs are far ahead of their NJAC competition in most events and could see themselves winning the championship with ease. The other teams just do not stack up statistically to compete with the national Division III contender that Rowan has become.
“I think we have a good chance to win over half of the events,” Dimit said. “There will be a lot of guys that stand out. Obviously, the hurdles should be really good, and the 4×400. Those are things we should score five or six people out of the eight. Those will be the events where I think we’ll score the most points, but I expect a lot of people to have good meets. I think Nana [Agyemang] will have a great long jump and PR in the 200. Amara [Conte] should win the 400. We’re looking forward to a good meet, but I think we can get it done and win for the tenth year in a row here.”
The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is probably Rowan’s toughest opponent in this meet, but the Profs so talented and so proven compared to other NJAC schools, that the title defense could end up being a walk in the park.
“This is one year that we’re clearly the best team,” Dimit said. “But we still gotta go out there and perform. We’ve been doing that all year, so I think we’ll go and get it done again.”
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