Denbo's triumph paces men's track at IC4As

With 78 teams and 1,732 athletes, the 79th Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America Championships is the largest and oldest collegiate indoor track meet in the nation. Princeton's men's team, coming off a Heps title, headed to Harvard's Gordon Track and Tennis Facility in Cambridge, Mass., this weekend to compete against some of the best squads in the nation, including Georgetown, which has won eight straight indoor titles.

No one could stop the Hoyas again this year as Georgetown scored 79 points, claiming the IC4As crown. Virginia Tech was second with 67 points, and Penn State, which beat the Tigers earlier this year, grabbed third place with 47 points. Princeton tied for 14th place with 16 points.

The nature of the IC4As, which rewards outstanding performances while not rewarding other performances that might add points in smaller meets, led to an odd result. Yale, which lost to Princeton during H-Y-Ps and Heps, beat the Tigers at IC4As. The Elis finished with 23 points, good for 11th place.

Strong and steady

Princeton was led by one of its captains, Scott Denbo. The junior, perhaps the Tigers' most reliable performer, won the shot put outright, claiming 10 crucial points. Denbo's toss went 59 feet, 6.25 inches, over a foot longer than the of his closest competitor, Monmouth's Jonathan Kalnas.

The Tigers also claimed more points in another field event — the pole vault. Junior Jonathan Jessup, another constant for the team, vaulted 5.10 meters, taking fourth place and adding five points to the Princeton tally.

Junior Tensai Asfaw, running in the 1000, won his preliminary heat Saturday. The next day, running in the final, Asfaw clocked in at 2:28.16, finishing in eighth place. His performance netted one point for the Tigers.

Senior distance runner Mike Spence qualified for the finals of the 5000, and ran a time of 14:42.74. Spence ended up in 10th place overall, just missing the cutoff for team points.

While the men competed at Harvard, the Tiger women were in action at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships, held in the Reggie Lewis Track and Field Center in Boston. After placing eighth of nine teams at Heps, Princeton faced even stiffer competition at ECACs.

Saturday, junior Rebecca Desman was the lone bright spot for the Tigers, taking fourth place in the high jump with a mark of 1.74 meters and picking up five points for Princeton, to leave the Tigers in 20th place after Saturday. But ECACs is a two day meet, with the bulk of the point-scoring finals Sunday, and the Tigers could not manage to pick up a single point on the second day of the meet. Princeton finished tied for 34th place.

After accomplishing the season's biggest goal by claiming the Heps title, the men's indoor track team turned in a more mediocre performance at IC4As. Even some of Princeton's athletes who scored points for the team had marks below their showings at Heps. Despite this apparent letdown, however, the Tigers' Heps victory culminated a successful season for indoor track.