At its lone home meet of the spring season, the men's track and field team braved inclement weather to earn a second-place finish at Dussault Track, 29 points behind conference-rival Bates.
For those athletes who had run the weekend prior at the Ross and Sharon Irwin Meet in San Diego, re-acclimating to the inhospitable northeast was difficult.
"The conditions in San Diego were unbelievable," senior Max Levitin, who ran the open 400 over spring break, said. "At [the Snowflake Classic at Tufts], the weather got worse and worse as the day wore on."
But for those not able to make it out to San Diego, the conditions were equally unforgiving.
Times were predictably slow, especially for the inaugural meet of the season, but the downpour hardly dampened the performances off the track, where just three Jumbos, sophomore Atticus Swett, junior Brian Williamson and freshman Nick Usoff, combined to score 33 of Tufts' 79 total points.
Swett secured 22 points, winning the discus with his heave of 134' 1" - a full three feet farther than the second-place effort - and placing second in the shot-put with a throw of 45' 5." Swett also notched his third top-five finish by launching the hammer 130' 11," good for fifth overall.
Williamson suffered from fouls in both the discus and shot-put, but compensated in the hammer throw. His heave of 160' 4" earned Williamson a second-place finish, less than eight feet behind national indoor runner-up, junior Sean Enos of Bates.
The third of the trio, Usoff, capped off perhaps the most dominant field day Tufts has had as a team in months. In the javelin, Usoff placed sixth, narrowly missing out on a top-five finish with his throw of 154' 10."
Usoff also competed in the 400-meter hurdles, where he cracked the top-five by less than half a second with a time of 57.14. Fellow freshmen Henry Zhou and David Rose finished seventh and 10th, respectively - Zhou in 59.37, Rose in 1:01.23.
Elsewhere on the track, sophomore Veer Bhalla recorded Tufts' second and last victory of the meet, as he crossed the line in the 800 with a time of 1:55.31, supported by classmate Alex Apostolides, who finished seventh and dipped right under the two-minute mark in 1:59.50.
"I just wanted to do as best I could in the race and not really worry about the time," Bhalla said. "It was my first race of the outdoor season, so I just wanted to have a solid season opener."
The longer sprints witnessed some success as well. In his first career meet, freshman Blake Coolidge recorded the better of his two times in the 200, finishing in seventh place in a time of 23.09. Senior Andrew Osborne crossed the line four places and less than three-tenths of a second behind Coolidge to fall just outside the top 10.
The 400 saw a tight finish not only at the very top, but throughout the top 20, rounded out by junior Alex Sheltzer, who crossed the line in 53.44.
Sophomore Woody Butler recorded Tufts' highest finish in the event, coming in seventh in 52.09. Levitin, who recorded a time of 53.38, finished 11 places behind Butler.
Senior Andrew Shapero and junior Greg Hardy each notched top-10 finishes for Tufts in the 10,000, as Shapero - one of three runners to break 32 minutes - finished second, while Hardy took sixth.
Junior Joe Poupard was Tufts' lone representative in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, where he finished in third place, sandwiched betwe en two athletes from conference-rival Colby.
With the second meet of the season in tow, Tufts will split up this coming weekend as it sends one contingent on Saturday to the Yellow Jacket Invitational at American International College and the other, smaller contingent on Friday to the Sam Howell Invitational at Princeton.
With about a month left until the start of championship season, the team has its sights set on duplicating last year's successes.
"NESCACs is less than a month away and we are looking to defend last year's victory," Levitin said. "I know we have the talent and determination to repeat as NESCAC Champions and given the hard work we are putting in already, I don't see any reason why we will not succeed in defending our title."
