With two weeks until the beginning of the championship season, the Binghamton men’s track and field team finished in fourth place of eight and the women’s team finished in third of seven at the Bucknell Team Challenge on Saturday. The teams also managed three first-place efforts as well as four second-place wins.

BU head coach Mike Thompson said that as a team, the Bearcats satisfied his expectations.

“I thought it was a decent performance,” he said. “I thought there were a lot of solid performances and overall I’d say [it was] a good meet.”

The teams used this meet as preparation for their upcoming championship season, which begins May 6 with the America East (AE) Outdoor Championships.

“When we go to that meet, we’re never really worried about the team score,” Thompson said. “We don’t go into that particular meet trying to win the meet. Players are put into events in preparation for their later, more important meets.”

Thompson said he was especially happy with many of his players’ individual performances in the meet. On the men’s side, Thompson cited the performance of freshman teammates David Bernstein, who took first place in the hammer throw (181-6), and Jack Fitzgerald, who finished first in the high jump (6-7 1/2). For the women, Thompson mentioned senior Sarah Osaheni, who won the 400-meter hurdles with a personal best time of 1:01:38, and junior Oyin Adewale, who came in third place in both the discus (134-5) and the shot put (40-7 1/2 inches).

The team has begun to shorten the duration of its workouts in practice to recover faster for the more important meets.

“Their workouts are easier in the sense that the volume is a lot lower,” Thompson said. “So they’re still running fast. They’re doing things that are high quality and high intensity, but the volume drops out a lot.”

Thompson said he believes his team is in good shape to do well in the future conference championships, but cares much more about his team’s mindset during those meets than their performance.

“As long as everybody competes as hard as they can and is as focused and determined as they can be, I’ll be happy regardless of the outcome,” Thompson said.

The teams will return to action at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Thursday, April 27 to Saturday, April 29.