The Central Connecticut State University men’s track and field team placed first overall in their hosted Blue Devil Invite meet on Friday, April 25. They were 135 points clear of their nearest competitors with multiple individual and team wins.Their final home event of the year was also special for eight graduate Blue Devils, as a senior recognition ceremony took place before the start of the meet.
Tristan Smith kicked off the throwing events with a P2 in shot put at 15.45m, with Nicholas Xavier competing in both the discus and hammer throw and finishing top 10 in both. Zach Bonini continued the Blue Devils’ success with second place in the javelin at 49.93m.
Bryan Elliott was able to score an overall victory in the triple jump following his competing in the long jump. The biggest success came with a Blue Devil sweep of the top five in the high jump, as Keith Townsend led a quintet of CCSU athletes to dominate, all jumping higher than 1.85m.
Kenny Agwu was the lone Blue Devil in the 110m Hurdles, where he tied for third with a 15.69. Agwu was joined in the 400m Hurdles by Maxwell Czarnecki, with the two runners scoring third and fourth in their heat, respectively.
A large field of 30 runners would take up multiple heats of the 100m. Central was still competitive as Jamar Alcena and Stylz Mitchell each won their respective heats. Mitchell’s 10.8 was the fastest time overall for the event. 32 runners in the 200m field would be no match for CCSU, as Noah Colangelo’s 21.81 was both the fastest in his heat and overall, with Jordan Jackson and Cole Robertson also winning their respective heats and KyMoy Phillip and Tristan Burke placing in the top five overall times.
Jayden Brown and Lucas Figueiredo anchored Central during the 400m, with Figueiredo taking the victory with a 47.47 as Brown took fourth, less than 2 seconds behind. Five Blue Devils would hit the track for the 800m, with every runner scoring top 10 results, highlighted by Aiden Budge winning with a 1:51, with Ryan McCauley at 1:54 following in P2.
Another five CCSU runners populated the 1500m across two heats, with Logan Crowley’s 4:10 enough to take the victory in the first, with Chris Abbey being the highest-placed Blue Devil in the second with a 3:53, good for P2 ahead of teammate Salvatore Masciarelli. The 3000m featured a trio of Central competitors, with Brendan Mellitt scoring the victory with an 8:38, over five seconds clear of his nearest runner.
Central’s relay teams saw success as well, as their 4×100 team of Tristan Burke, Jamar Alcena, Jordan Jackson and Stylz Mitchell were a mere 0.1 seconds off of scoring the victory to AIC, while a win was scored in the 4×400 thanks to the A team of Cole Robertson, Gabriel Kwarteng, Aiden Budge and Chris Abbey at a 3:26, with the B team of Jonathan Orlando, Ryan McCauley, Tristan Burke and Ryan Scappaticci barely losing 2nd with a 3:38 time.
The invite came after a busy week for the Blue Devil track team. CCSU was participating in the UConn Northeast Challenge the Friday previous and had national recognition on Thursday at the Penn Relays, as Eddie Nicholas and James Sullivan were present to compete in the 3000m steeplechase and the 5000m, respectively, with both runners finishing solidly in the middle of their respective fields.
Colin Winkler achieved NEC Field Athlete Player of the Week on April 23. Greyson Golda was honored as an NEC Rookie of the Week and Noah Colangelo was named as an NEC Prime Performer.
Their next event will consist of the two-day NEC Championships at Stonehill College, starting on May 3 and 4.
