PRINCETON, N.J. - The Virginia men’s and women’s track and field teams both finished second at the ECAC/IC4A Championships Sunday in Princeton, N.J. The men’s 4x100m relay defended its 2007 title, winning the event in 41.03 and anchored the men’s team into second place with 55 points, just seven behind Liberty’s 62. For the women, Ayla Smith turned in a time of 1:00.08 to win the ECAC 400m hurdles, leading the squad to second with 53 points. Connecticut’s women won the championship with 83 points.
“Going into the weekend, this was not a meet that we were looking to win,” head coach Randy Bungard said. “We wanted to compete to improve our times to try to reach regional qualifying marks and along the way, we scored a lot of points.
“Our men competed hard all three days and put us in a position to have a shot at winning the championship. Each of the relays ran with a purpose and I’m proud of the way our guys went after it, but Liberty is a very good team that has a lot of depth and they just barely beat us today.
“On the women’s side, we lost a few people due to graduation ceremonies. But to still get second with the limited entries says a lot about the effort and accomplishments the women put in all weekend.”
All three of Virginia’s men’s relay team finished in the top three of the championship. The 4x100m quartet of Conlon Bonner, Reuben Jones, Meikle Paschal and Adams Abdulrazaaq took first, while the 4x800m team of Kevin Tschirhart, Alex Bowman, Steve Finley and Andrew Jesien finished second in 7:32.55. The 4x400m team of Bonner, Jones, Paschal and Abdulrazaaq finished third in 3:10.29.
Jones also had two other top finishes on the final day of action. After collecting his second-straight 4x100m crown, he finished runner-up in the 100m dash in 10.66 and took third in the 200m with a time of 21.53.
Lauren Echko finished second in the 100m hurdles in 13.73, just one-tenth of a second away from her personal-best time, ran yesterday.
After running the fastest 800m time since 1992 for the Cavaliers, Huma Husain finished sixth in the event in 2:11.69, just three seconds shy of her finish yesterday.
Adams Abdulrazaaq, making it to the finals of the 110 hurdles after putting in a personal-best performance of 14.19 yesterday, took seventh in the event in 14.25 seconds.
Virginia will take next weekend off in preparation for the 2008 NCAA East Region Championships at Florida State on May 30-31. The Cavaliers have 26 qualifiers for the championships.
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Courtesy: VirginiaSports.com