WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Brandeis University track and field teams had six different All-New England performances at the New England Division III Championships at Williams College this weekend. Four came from the women who scored 19 points and finished in 15th place The men had two, earning 10 points to finish in a tie for 21st place.
The first All-New England honor came on Friday night in the 10,000-meter run. Senior Matthew Driben (Reading, Pa./Wyomissing Area) finished second overall with a time of 31:35.67. He finished 25 seconds out of first place and four seconds ahead of third. Driben took close to a minute and a half off his previous career best in the 10K.
The men's other scoring performance came in the 4x100-meter relay. The team of first-years Danny Krigman (Chelmsford, Mass. / Chelmsford) and Dean Carey (New York, N.Y. / Stuyvesant), junior Dean Campbell (Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. / Manchester-Essex Regional) and sophomore Parker Jones (Westbury, N.Y. / Packer Collegiate Institute) turned in a time of 43.73 seconds. They were about half a second off of their season-best time, but still came in seventh overall by 0.64 seconds ahead of the eighth-place squad.
On the women's side, senior Erin Magill (Moretown, Vt./Harwood Union) was the team's top finisher, placing as the runner-up in the 5,000-meter run. She broke 17 minutes for the third time this outdoor season with a mark of 16:58.05. Though she wasn't able to lower her season-best time, Magill still ranks 18th in Division III and remains in line for her third NCAA berth of the school year.
In the 1,500-meter run, senior Natalie Hattan (Sugar Land, Texas/Clements) earned All-New England honors with a fifth-place finish. She ran 4:42.18, about two seconds out of fourth and edging the sixth-place finisher by 0.15 seconds. Hattan took more than two seconds of her previous best in the metric mile.
The final individual top-eight finisher for the Judges was junior Yahni Lapa (West Newton, Mass. / Newton North) in the 400-meter hurdles. Lapa posted a time of 1:05.72, about three-quarters of a second better than her previous career-best in the event, good for sixth place. She was 0.28 faster than the seventh-place finisher and 0.41 behind fifth.
Rounding out the scoring for the Judges was the 4x800-meter relay, with the team of junior Bridget Pickard (Westwood, Mass. / Westwood), sophomore Lizzy Reynolds (Winchester, Mass. / Winchester), Hattan and senior Erika Karlin (Hagerstown, Md. / North Hagerstown) placing fifth with a time of 9:54.88, a good four seconds ahead of the sixth-place finishers.