UMW Indoor Track Season Completed

Last Saturday, the UMW men’s and women’s indoor track and field teams sent a small squad of five runners to the Virginia Tech Last Chance meet in Blacksburg, Va.

As the final meet of UMW’s indoor season, the Last Chance meet offers athletes a final opportunity to qualify for the NCAA national meet.

“The meet went alright. We had a couple solid performances that made it a good trip. It was a good way to end the indoor season,” said senior men’s co-captain Matt Cash.
Schools who competed in the meet included host Virginia Tech, Salisbury University, Eastern Mennonite University and various other Division I programs.

The UMW athletes who competed on Saturday were senior Matt Geller in the weight throw with a mark of 52 feet, two inches, Daniel Piccolo running the 60 meters sprint in 7.18 seconds, and Jason Driscoll finishing the mile with 4:27.80. In the 800 meter run, senior Matt Cash and senior co-captain Mo Yousuf both ran with times of 1:55.46 and 1:57.28, respectively.

“Mo Yousuf had a great 800 meter race with running a personal best for himself on an indoor track,” Cash said. “He has made some great improvements so far this year with limited training, and he could very well make the national provisional qualifying time in the 800 if he stays healthy. I’ll be looking to join him with that as well,” Cash added.

Although the 2009 to 2010 indoor track season has come to its conclusion, UMW objectives are unchanged. According to Cash, the team still has one more feat they hope to accomplish.

“Our team goal for the year is simple;Beat Salisbury at CACs,” Cash said. “We were able to get it done in cross country, now we want to go to their home track and hurt them. We had a tough winter with all the snow limiting our work, but Salisbury had the same problem so we won’t be making excuses from that.”

Despite recent setbacks, including a few injuries and the weather, the team has not been fazed.

“I think our strength this year will be our depth as a team at conferences,” Cash stated. “Salisbury has their star athletes that bring in big points, but we have a lot of guys who are all capable of picking up the slack and making CACs a close meet.”

The men and women teams will focus in the coming weeks on staying injury-free and improving fitness with rigorous workouts and training.  Both teams will be back to competition next week when UMW hosts the Battleground Relays on March 19 and 20.

“We have some runners looking to break a few school records that weekend,” Cash said. “It will be a fun couple of days.”