WALTHAM, Mass. - Two Brandeis University track and field competitors reached NCAA qualifying marks today as the Judge women finished first out of six teams at the 2010 Reggie Poyau Memorial Invitational. The Brandeis men placed fourth out of seven squads.
For the women, the lead competitors were junior Lucia Capano (Manchester, N.H./Manchester Central), who earned three victories and reached one NCAA qualifying standard, and senior co-captain Suzanne Bernier (Hanson, Mass./Whitman-Hanson Regional), who had the other NCAA mark and set a school record.
Capano qualified for her first career NCAA championship in the triple jump, which she won with a leap of 11.27 meters (36 feet, 11 ¾ inches), a provisional mark that won the event by 0.39 meters, or more than one foot, three inches. Capano added victories in the long jump (5.30 meters; 17 feet, 4 ¾ inches) and the 55-meter dash (7.60 seconds), while also running the lead leg of the 1,600-meter relay that finished second with a time of 4:19.00.
Bernier's lone event was the high jump, which she won with a school-record height of 1.67 meters (5 feet, 5 3/4 inches). She established a new school record by 0.02 meters, a mark which she had tied in December and topped the NCAA Division III provisional qualifying standard by 0.01 meters. Bernier won the event by four inches.
The Brandeis women had three other individual winners and one victorious relay. Senior Julia Alpaio (Cranston, R.I./Cranston East) captured the 600-meter dash with a time of 2:20.84. Senior Beth Pisarik (Chelmsford, Mass./Chelmsford) held off her opponent in the 1,000-meter run by four-tenths of a second with a time of 3:01.47, while junior Grayce Selig (Narberth, Pa./Springside School) led a 1-2-3 sweep for the Judges in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 10:11.72.
Brandeis closed out the meet by winning the 3,200-meter relay as the team of sophomore Erin Bisceglia (Durham, Conn./Coginchaug), senior Jess Girard (Billerica, Mass./Billerica Memorial), junior Hannah Lindholm (Madison, Wisc./West) and Beth Pisarik won with a time of 9:47.21.
On the men's side, Brandeis took home four first-place finishes. Rookie Brian Foley (Foxboro, Mass./Foxboro) edged the field in the 400-meter dash with a time of 51.44 seconds, three-hundredths of a second ahead of the runner-up. Junior Devon Holgate (Cumberland, R.I./Cumberland) continued his fine season with a win in the meet's first individual race, the 3,000-meter run in 8:44.45. Holgate was passed on the next-to-last lap, but came back on the final straight-away to edge a competitor from Amherst.
The Judges also took a pair of middle-distance events. Senior Aaron Udel (Dalton, Mass./Waconah Regional) won the 800-meter run with a time of 2:00.14, while junior Ben Bray (Duxbury, Mass./Duxbury) crossed the line first in the mile in 4:23.23.
The Reggie Poyau Memorial Invitational is named after Brandeis runner Reggie Poyau, who drowned in May, 2003, while studying abroad in Senegal.