Track & Field Competitors Earn All-New England Honors

Multiple members of the men’s and women’s track and field teams headed northwest to Williamstown, Massachusetts this past weekend to compete in the New England Division III Outdoor Championships, with events lasting from Friday, May 6, through the day on Saturday, May 7. Over the course of the two-day meet, 11 Mammoths earned All-New England honors, which are given to the top eight finishers in each event.

Men

While only seven members of the men’s track and field team competed this past weekend due to a Covid outbreak on the team, they all placed well and managed to earn an overall placement of 17th out of 31 teams despite their distinct numbers disadvantage.

Max Spelke ’23 and Henry Buren ’22 got the meet started for the Mammoths on Friday, with Spelke competing in the decathlon and Buren in the 100-meter dash. They each placed highly in their respective events.

Decathlete Spelke finished the two-day event with a personal-best score of 5,325 points, good for seventh place and All-New England honors. In addition to placing second in the shot put, Spelke also scored personal bests in six individual events: the 100-meter dash, 400-meter dash, 1,500-meter run, long jump, javelin, and pole vault.

Buren finished second in the 100-meter dash preliminaries, with an amazing time of 10.97 seconds, before coming in seventh in the final to earn All-New England honors as well.

The Mammoths continued to rack up awards over the course of a long day on Saturday.

High jumper Camden Heafitz ’25 started the day off strong, placing second. Heafitz cleared 1.96 meters, which matched his personal best and earned him All-New England honors. Gabriel dos Santos ’24 also earned All-New England honors in the high jump, as he finished sixth after clearing 1.86 meters.

Heafitz, discussing his thoughts on the performance this weekend, said, “I think the team did great, all of us ran great races and set fantastic marks. We should all definitely have our heads high.”

Women

The women’s track and field team also made their mark this past weekend, as eight Mammoths returned home with All-New England honors. And although they also had only a small number of individuals competing, they finished even higher than their male counterparts, tying for eighth place in a field of 33 competing teams.

Star senior Anna Madden ’22 received All-New England honors in two events: the 400-meter run and the 4x400 meter relay. In her individual 400-meter race, Madden finished with a time of 57.52, earning her second place and her first All-New England accolade of the weekend. Then, in conjunction with Juanita Jaramillo ’22, Katie Lingen ’22, and Eliza Cardwell ’25, she earned her second — the team earned third place in the 4x400 meter relay, in a season-best time of 3:53.01.

But the 400-meters wasn’t the only distance at which the team excelled — two Mammoths also acquired All-New England honors in the 1,500 meters. Julia Schor ’25 finished second with a time of 4:39.26, and Ally Deegan ’24 crossed the line only three seconds behind her (4:42.33) in sixth.

In the 400-meter hurdles, Ava Tillman ’23 earned her first All-New England award and qualified for the NEICAAA Championships with a personal-best time of 1:05.06 to notch her third place.

And in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, first-year Claire Callon ’25 ran a personal-best time in her New England Championship debut. She recorded a time of 11:31.23, good for sixth place.

Qualifying Mammoths will head to Bryant University this weekend to compete in the NEICAAA Outdoor Championships, which will run from Friday, May 13, through Saturday, May 14. Events will begin at 10 a.m. on Friday.