While men’s and women’s basketball have grabbed all the major headlines on campus thus far in the semester, other sports have started heating up on the Hilltop. While Indoor Track athletes have registered a number of strong times at this point in the season, the Hoya baseball team limped out of the starting gate with a pair of losses at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
Indoor Track: A trip up to New York for the NCAA qualifiers produced several strong times from Hoya runners on the indoor track. Senior Monica Hargrove twice eclipsed the 55-second mark in the 400 meters. She ran an NCAA provisional time in the preliminary round, checking in at 54.27 seconds, qualifying her for the National Championships, and then following up with a 54.13 seconds in the finals. Her male counterpart in the same distance, Chris Bonner, recorded a 50.59.
Senior Amanda Pape finished third in her 3000 meter long distance event with an NCAA provisional time of 9:32.25. The male long distance runners had equally impressive times, led by junior Rod Koborsi who finished second in the 3000 meters after already having qualified for the NCAA’s in the 5000 meters. He placed second in the race, posting an 8:02.25. Coming in shortly thereafter were sophomore Fleet Hower, at seventh place in 8:15.4, and Brian Dalpiaz, who finished eighth at 8:18.
The Hoya middle distance runners also posted fast times, notably Junior Nat Glackin who ran a 1:53.74 in the 800 meters to secure a Big East qualifying spot. Senior Trieniere Clement ran the mile in 4:39.49, barely missing the automatic NCAA qualifying mark by a second, but locking in a provisional qualifying time. Also achieving a provisional time in the mile was Colleen Kelly who finished in 4:45.74.
Away from the rest of the squad, sophomore Chris Lukezic competed out west in a Pac-10 invitational meet. At the University of Washington he ran the 3000 meters in 8:00.59 to garner a provisional NCAA invitation. Lukezic, recently featured in Runner’s World magazine, was racing mostly against professional runners at the meet.
The Hoya runners will return to the track when they travel to Syracuse, NY to take part in the Big East championships Feb. 21-22.
Baseball: The Hoyas dropped two on their road trip to William & Mary, losing the second game 9-2 in Williamsburg, Va. The Hoyas jumped out to an early lead, manufacturing a run off of Parker Brooks’ single in the first inning. He moved to second by tagging up, then advanced to third on a fielder’s choice before scoring as a result of a balk.
After allowing three runs in the third, Georgetown kept it close by continuing to work with “small-ball” to score runs. Junior Andrew Cleary reached base when he was hit by a pitch, and then moved to third on a double by Michael Lombardi. He cut the lead in half by scoring on Drew Dargan’s sacrifice fly. That would be as close as the Hoyas would come, as they allowed six runs over the next two innings to drop to 0-2 on the year. The team had lost the opening game of the two game series 11-4.
