BU track coach Mike Thompson summed it up best.

‘We went above and beyond anything I expected,’ Thompson said regarding this past weekend’s America East Outdoor Track and Field Championship. The men placed fourth out of the nine-team field and the women placed fifth, though these results do not do justice to the five school records that were broken. BU sprinter Kim Williams was named Women’s Track Athlete of the Meet

The women’s side was home to two of the five school records, both of the records set by the relay teams. The 4×100 team of Williams, junior Keisha Short, and freshmen Deahna Vinson and Jasmine Hinson broke the record with a time of 47.14 seconds, good enough to meet the ECAC qualifying standard. The 4×400 team of Williams, Short, Vinson, and junior Dayna Johnson broke their record with a time of 3:47.47 seconds, good enough for the ECAC and almost a full second in front of second place finisher Albany.

The anchor of both relay teams, Williams was also in rare form during her 200-meter race. Williams took the gold, her third of the meet, with an NCAA regional and ECAC qualifying time of 23.83. Williams is at the top of her game going into the postseason, not to mention top-heavy with those medals around her neck.

And the impressive results of the relayers did not end there. Johnson captured first place in the triple jump with a tree frog-like jump of 12.41 meters, also good enough for the ECAC qualifier, and more impressive, the NCAA regional meet. She would not stop at 20 points though ‘ she added eight more with a second place finish in the 400-meter hurdles with a time just over 1:02.

Johnson’s 4×400 teammate, Keisha Short, also added individual points on the day with a first place finish in the 400-meter dash. Her time of 56.70 seconds was only .26 seconds off of the ECAC qualifying time.

Another outstanding performance on the women’s side came from sophomore Marsha Fiesinger. Her day was highlighted by her first-place finish in the Heptathlon in which she scored close to 250 points more than the second place finisher from Albany. She also rounded up two points in the javelin throw and three points in the high jump. Coach Thompson acknowledged that she had ‘a great meet top to bottom.’ Other points in the high jump came from junior Aja Phipps who took third place with a jump of 1.63 meters.

Nobody jumped higher on the women’s side than junior pole vaulter Katie Wilmer. She captured the gold with a vault of 3.45 meters, besting second place in jumps by .15 meters.

On the men’s side, All-American senior Rory Quiller captured a first place finish in the event with a regional qualifying jump.

‘Rory is the best jumper in the East; he’s looking to win and then move on to bigger things [at the NCAAs],’ Thompson said.

Quiller was not the only Bearcat to receive points in the event. Sophomore Tyler Nichols scored two points and junior Chris Yelverton scored one.

The 13 pole vault points were not all the Bearcats took from the field. Senior thrower Kevin Hall took first place in the shot put with a school record and IC4A qualifying throw of 52-feet 5-1/4 inches. He was not satisfied with only 10 points, so he took another six with a third place finish in the hammer. Although Hall had a very good hammer throw, teammate Justin Halleck seemed to really break out.

‘He was the biggest surprise of the meet,’ Thompson said of Halleck. ‘His PRs were incredible.’ The sophomore increased his personal record in the hammer by 10 feet and an incredible 17 feet in the discus in which he took second place. Those changes are equivalent to a miler taking off at least five seconds. Junior Ben Babcock also managed to wrack up a point in the discus.

One of the other school records broken was in the 400-meter dash by Jimmy Massar in his second place finish. Massar, who has been near the top of races all season, had his best one despite not taking the gold. His time of 48.17 seconds was good enough to qualify for the IC4A meet.

Massar was also part of the 4×100 relay that took second place and qualified for the IC4A meet. The others on the team, graduate student Adam Goldberg and sophomores Geoff Campbell and Dan Walker each scored in other events. Goldberg broke the fifth school record of the meet with his fifth place finish in the 110 hurdles with a time of 14.85 seconds, good enough for the IC4As. Geoff Campbell took third place in the 100-meter dash with a time of 11.13 seconds, .16 seconds faster than teammate Dan Walker, who placed seventh in the event. Campbell also managed a sixth place finish in the 200-meter dash with a time of 22.26 seconds.

The distance runners picked up a couple of points as well. Freshman Chris Gaube placed seventh in the 5k run and fellow freshman Craig Coon had the same result in the 10k.

Several of the athletes on the team move on to the post season in the ECAC, IC4A, and Regional meets. Coach Thompson prophesied that the men’s and women’s teams ‘should each realistically take 10 to 15 points each.’ At the regional meet, Quiller is expected to win while Thompson thinks Johnson and Williams should be in the top-25 in their respective events.