WALTHAM, Mass. – Both the Brandeis men's and women's track and field teams earned third-place finishes behind a pair of Division II squads today at the 2011 Reggie Poyau Memorial Invitational. The Judges had wins in four events from both squads in their only home meet of the indoor season.
On the men's side, Brandeis's top performance in an event as a team came from senior Chris Brown (Chelmsford, Mass./Chelmsford) and sophomore Taylor Dundas (Bath, Maine/Cheverus), who placed first and second in the mile run. With strong closing kicks, the duo posted times of 4:20.96 and 4:23.67, respectively, to take the top two spots. Brown's time is currently ranked fifth in Division III, while Dundas would be sixth-best.
Sophomore Vincent Asante (Bronx, N.Y./ High School for Arts Imagination and Inquiry) was impressive in taking the 55-meter dash. He ran a time of 6.64 seconds in the preliminaries to win his heat by nearly a quarter of a season. In the finals, his time of 6.59 seconds was 0.12 seconds ahead of the runner-up from UMass Lowell. When converted to the 60-meter time used for NCAA Division III championship qualification, Asante's time would be the 10th-fastest in the nation this season.
Junior Brian Foley (Foxboro, Mass./Foxborough) also had a fine sprint performance, winning the 400-meter dash with a time of 51.41 seconds, more than a full second ahead of his cross-town rivals from Bentley. That time would also rank 10th in Division III before factoring in other results from the weekend.
The lone winning performance for the Brandeis men in a field event was turned in by sophomore Kensai Hughes (Wayne, N.J./Wayne Valley), who earned the top spot in the long jump. His distance of 6.16 meters (20 feet, 2.5 inches) edged a foe from UMass Lowell by 2 ¼ inches.
As a team, the Brandeis men finished with 83 points, six behind Bentley, who scored 89 points. Stonehill College won the meet with 180 points. The Brandeis women tallied 82 points to finish behind Stonehill (129) and UMass Lowell (111).
The Reggie Poyau Memorial Invitational is named after Brandeis runner Reggie Poyau, who drowned in May, 2003, while studying abroad in Senegal.