Place Named Distance Athlete of Year

Mar 1, 2008

FULL RESULTS

GRANVILLE, Ohio – A pair of record-setting wins by North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Distance Athlete of the Year Ryan Place (Meshoppen, Pa./Elk Lake) on the second day, giving him three total championships and two league records, helped the Allegheny College Gators to a runner-up finish at the 2008 NCAC Championships, hosted by Denison University. Place won the 5,000, 3,000 and mile, setting conference records in the latter two.

Ohio Wesleyan snapped Allegheny’s five-year win streak at the event, scoring 163.5 points to 135 for Allegheny. Denison took third with 73 points while Wabash (69), Oberlin (49.5), Wooster (48), Kenyon (25), Wittenberg (25), Earlham (24) and Hiram (12) rounded out the teams in the field.

Allegheny’s Matt Yurky (Homer City, Pa./Homer-Center) took seventh place overall in the long jump, earning the Gators two points with his leap of 20-3.50, tying his career best set earlier this season. The Gators keep hold of the lead after the event, despite 11 points from the Battling Bishops of Ohio Wesleyan, with the Gators clinging to a 35-28 lead over OWU, with Oberlin keeping in range with 25 points.

Peter Sotherland (Kalamazoo, Mich./Kalamazoo Central) took second in the pole vault, clearing a career-best 14-3.50, just the second time in his career that he has cleared the 14-foot plateau, with teammate Cedric Gamble (Boalsburg, Pa./State College) taking fourth, also setting a career-best with a clearance of 13-5.75. Allegheny’s 13 points in the event was tied with Wabash’s total, and increases Allegheny’s lead over the field. Through five events of the competition, the Gators’ 48 points led the competition with Ohio Wesleyan (35.5), Oberlin (26.5) and Wabash (23) rounding out the top four teams in the field.

For the first time in the meet, the Gators were overtaken in the points standings, as Ohio Wesleyan added 13 points after a first- and sixth-place finish in the high jump, an event Allegheny was unable to score in. The Battling Bishops lead the Gators by the narrowest of margins, 48.5-to-48, with Wooster (32), Oberlin (26.5) and Wabash (26) filing in behind.

The gap for the Gators widened during the 4x200-meter relay, although only by a narrow margin as the Gator team of Craig Stamm (Washington, Pa./Washington), Josh Brannan (Latrobe, Pa./Greater Latrobe), Jeremy Walker (Greensburg, Pa./Hempfield) and Chas Moore-Seymore (Buffalo, N.Y./St. Francis) ran to a time of 1:33.35, behind only the Ohio Wesleyan team, who ran a 1:31.33. With the two-point difference, Ohio Wesleyan widened their lead to 58.5-to-56, with the remainder of the field sitting over 20 points out of second place.

In the mile, the Gators dominated, scoring four inside of the top six overall, earning 23 points, the most by any team in any single event thus far in the competition. Place set conference- and school-records by running to a time of 4:17.37, with Craig Ball (Pittsburgh, Pa./Penn Hills) also earning All-NCAC honors with a third place finish in a time of 4:21.67. Tony Dipre (Twinsburg, Ohio/Walsh Jesuit) and Jeramie Parker (Middletown, Md./Middletown) finished neck-in-neck, Dipre in a time of 4:23.09, good for fifth overall and Parker in a time of 4:23.37, placing sixth. With the 23 points, the Gators pushed ahead by a double-figure margin, 79-to-60.5 over the Battling Bishops.

Yurky came back to place sixth in the 55-meter hurdles, sprinting to a time of 8.05, a career best for the junior. The three points pushed Allegheny to 82 for the meet; however, Ohio Wesleyan placed third, fourth and fifth to cut into the Gator lead, closing to within 6.5 at 82-75.5 through nine scoring events.

The Gators were shut out of the 400-meter dash, with Ohio Wesleyan scoring 14 points, pushing ahead, this time at a margin of 89.5-to-82 with six events remaining in the competition.

The men’s distance medley relay tam of Matt Brush (Centereach, N.Y./Centereach), Alex Gorski (Pittsburgh, Pa./Mt. Lebanon), Jamie Drab (North East, Pa./North East) and Ben Eyer (Lititz, Pa./Manheim Central) took second overall behind Ohio Wesleyan, with the quartet running to a time of 10:34.81, two seconds behind the Battling Bishops. With 11 events down the pike, the Gator deficit was increased by two, at 99.5-to-99.

Moore-Seymore, running in his second event of the day after the 4x200-meter relay, took second in the 55-meter dash, running a career-best time of 6.67, finishing just a hundredths of a second from the first place finisher. Brannan and Stamm added a fifth and eighth place finish, each, helping the Gators to 13 team points, just two behind event leader Ohio Wesleyan’s 15. With OWU’s two-point win in the event it pushes the Battling Bishops’ advantage to 11.5 at 114.5-to-103.

The Gator trio of Dipre, Ball and Garret Piispanen (Fruita, Colo./Fruita Monument) placed sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively, giving Allegheny six points, the same total as Ohio Wesleyan, who had an individual third-place finisher. With three scoring events remaining, Ohio Wesleyan kept hold of its 11.5 point lead at 120.5-to-109, with Wabash’s 60 points providing a distant third place.

Brannan’s seventh-place finish in the 200 meter dash (23.45) gave the Gators a pair of points; however, it was this event that Ohio Wesleyan pulled away, scoring 27 points and taking places 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8, pushing the Battling Bishops ahead by a margin of 147.5-to-111.

Place set his second conference record in as many races when he took top honors in the 3,000-meter run, crossing the finish line in the 15-lap race in a time of 8:34.04, breaking the former record set in 2002 by over four seconds. Teammate Zac Ross (Meadville, Pa./Meadville Area) placed third overall in a time of 8:49.99 with Matt Hoy (Moon Township, Pa./Moon) finishing sixth in a time of 8:58.48. With the 19 points, the Gators closed the gap on OWU; but the damage had already been done, as the Bishops led 151.5-to-130.

In the Championship’s final event, the 4x400-meter relay, the Gator squad of Gorski, Piispanen, Alex Rowland (Pittsburgh, Pa./Fox Chapel Area) and Ball took fourth overall in a time of 3:30.38.

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