CHICAGO, Ill. – The Brandeis University indoor track and field teams finished in seventh place at the 2015 University Athletic Association Championships held at the University of Chicago this weekend.
The top performance of the day and the weekend came from senior Mo Sidique (Harlem, N.Y./St. Raymond's High School for Boys) in the triple jump. Sidique, who won the event on his home turf in 2014, was unable to repeat his championship, but did finish in second place for his third career All-Association bid in the event. Sidique had three different leaps that would have qualified him for the silver medal, but his best was his fifth jump of 13.78 meters (45 feet, 2 ½ inches). Emory junior Max Hoberman, the runner-up in Waltham last year, won the event with a leap of 14.49 meters (47-6 ½).
The Judges had two other individual scoring performances on the second day of competition, both on the women's side. Junior miler Kelsey Whitaker (Kingston, Mass./Notre Dame Acad.) just missed earning All-UAA honors in the event for the second year in a row. She posted a time of 5:01.77 to finish in fourth place. Whitaker missed the podium by about 1.5 seconds. In the 200-meter dash, rookie Haliana Burhans (Charlotte, Vt./Champlain Valley Union) qualified for the finals in the fifth spot and that was her final placement, with a time of 26.53 seconds. Burhans shaved seven-hundredths of a second off her prelim time, but was still about a tenth of a second off her season-best.
The Judges also had two scoring relays on the day. In the women's 1,600-meter relay, the team of Whitaker, Burhans, sophomore Ashley Piccirillo-Horan (No. Granby, Conn./Granby Memorial) and rookie Kyra Shreeve (Northborough, Mass. / Algonquin Reg.) finished in sixth place with a time of 4:11.04. The men's 4x400-meter relay also placed sixth, with the quartet of rookie Marcello Brociner (Somerville, Mass./Somerville) and sophomores Jeremy Wilson (Elizabeth, N.J./Elizabeth), Omar Scruggs (Tampa, Fla./Berkeley Prep) and Nick Wactor (Oakland, Calif./Head-Royce) turning in a time of 3:35.13.
Other notable Day 2 performances outside of the scorers came in the women's 3,000-meters, where sophomores Lydia McCaleb (Evanston, Ill./Evanston Township) and Kate Farrell (Windham, N.H. /Windham) were ninth and 10th respectively, with times of 10:33.37 and 10:37.00, both career-bests and in the men's mile, where junior Grady Ward (Essex, Vt./Essex Junction) was eighth with a time of 4:26.15, good enough to win the first heat.
Both Brandeis teams finished in seveth place - the women scored 13 points, the men had 12.
The Judges' final meet prior to the NCAA Championships will take place next weekend in New York, the ECAC Division III Championships.