Boston, Mass. (February 9, 2007)?In the final competition before next week's MAAC Indoor Championships, Manhattan Track and Field's Dexter Jules and Nick Newman teamed up for a Jasper sweep of the horizontal jumps, while four other Jaspers posted personal bests one day one of Boston University's Valentine Invitational.
The Jaspers' lone entrant in the long jump proved to be the meet's best with Newman easily jumping his way to the event title. Newman's mark of 7.40m was nearly one half of a meter better than the runner-up's best mark.
Following Newman's performance, junior Dexter Jules took over the runway en route to winning the triple jump title, while his sophomore teammate Kosta Randjic finished second. As Jules continues his fight back from a series of nagging injuries that began near the end of last year's outdoor campaign, the junior from New Jersey set a new season best for the second consecutive week as his winning mark of 15.16m eclipses last week's best of 15.06m. Randjic's top jump of 14.84m edged out third place finisher Southern Connecticut's Robert Keizer by one centimeter.
Freshman DeSean Hooshing highlighted Manhattan's performance in the vertical jumps by setting a new personal record in the pole vault. Hooshing cleared 4.10m to finish 13th overall.
Two other freshman joined Hooshing in setting new PR's as Milos Vuckovic and Tobias Lundgren did their damage on the track. Vuckovic, a two-time 800m Serbian Senior National Champion who came to Manhattan with a PR of 1:49.33, ran his best indoor time to date, 1:52.53, to finish 11th overall. Lundgren, a former Swedish Junior National Champion in the 3K, produced an indoor PR in the 3000m by clocking in at 8:33.67 to finish 30th overall. Junior Tom Murphy was Manhattan's second best finisher in the event at 8:51.74.
After securing an IC4A qualifying time last week in he 400m, senior Darnell Douglas barely missed out on meeting the 500m qualifying time in his race Friday night. Douglas finished fourth on in the 500m dash with a time of 1:05.40 Also in the sprints, senior Joe Cruz ran a personal best of 23.00s in the 200m to rank 63rd out of 140 finishers. Cruz, a former MAAC Champion hurdler, also ran the 55m hurdles in Boston, posting the ninth best preliminary time at 7.83s, but missing out on the finals.
Senior Zoran Loncar had the best day of any Jasper in the throws with his fourth place finish in the weight throw. Loncar's mark of 18.88m is the second best result the former IC4A hammer champion has produced thus far this indoor season.
The Manhattan women's team is scheduled to compete on Saturday, February 10, along with the men's distance medley relay of Vuckovic, Douglas, freshman Matt Kaftanski, and Lundgren.
