The University of Rhode Island men’s track and field team competed in the Boston University Terrier Classic on Saturday, climbing the Atlantic 10 event seeding and rewriting the mile record book.
Only six athletes on URI’s roster made the 82-mile trip to the BU Track & Tennis Center in Boston. The Rams spread their six athletes between two events, the mile and the 400-meter sprint. URI Head Coach Trent Baltzell and his staff wanted to take advantage of the high-quality oval at BU.
“When you go up to BU the expectation is that all the events on the oval are going to be really high level,” Baltzell said. “You want to have them compete there so they can get a good seed time for championships.”
URI delivered on its plan to climb the A-10 seeding behind the performance of fourth-year Jarrett Young. Despite the fact that it was Young’s first time running the 400-meter this season, the veteran would finish with a time of 48.07 seconds. Young’s time gave him and the Rams the number one seed in the 400-meter with 22 days remaining until the Indoor Atlantic 10 Championship.
“We came away from the meet fairly productive,” Baltzell said. “We came away with the number one 400 seed in the conference from Jarrett Young who has historically been one of the best long sprinters in the conference during his time here.”
Young wasn’t the only Ram to have a productive day on the oval; first-year Maddox Jordan shattered his personal best in the mile en route to setting a top-10 mark in URI history. Jordan ran the mile in 4:08.60 minutes; in just his second collegiate mile, Jordan cut his time by 11 seconds and now holds the seventh-best time in program history.
Jordan could have had the sixth-best time in program history had it not been for fifth-year Joe DosReis finishing in 4:04.79 minutes. When the season began, Baltzell described DosReis as a “hired assassin” meant to kill the competition in the mile. DosReis’ time is the fifth-best in URI history, and he now holds three of the top five mile times despite having just run the mile three times.
Two new entries into the record books wasn’t enough for the Rams; third-year Antonio Capalbo got in on the fun too. Capalbo finished the mile in 4:09.78, a new personal best by three seconds. Jordan and Capalbo now hold the 14th and 15th seeds in the Atlantic 10 and have another two meets to climb that ladder.
With 22 days until Indoor A-10s, the Rams’ coaching staff will have to start paying attention to these seedings in order to put together their championship roster, according to Baltzell.
“It’ll be similar to what we’ve seen in the past with us coming alive for the championships,” Baltzell said. “Relative to the conference, we’re already in a pretty good position.”
“Coming alive for the championships” is the standard under Baltzell; since taking over the head coaching duties at URI, the Rams have won every conference championship and sit one shy of the A-10 record for most indoor championships won in a row. Currently, Rhode Island is tied with the Virginia Tech Hokies with four in a row. VT set that record from 1997 to 2000 and in 2004 made the move to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
One of the side effects of this historic success is the feeling of being content. Baltzell and his staff are working hard to keep the team motivated as they approach this historical opportunity.
“When the streak gets this long, these guys, some of them, are taking it for granted,” Baltzell said. “We’re doing our best as a staff to have them see the truth for what this is… The longer you go on, the less they hear that message and understand it, and the more they think, alright, we’re entitled to this championship because of this uniform we’re putting on.”
Between the indoor and outdoor seasons, the Rams have brought home eight straight Atlantic 10 titles. However, these weren’t easy wins for URI, and Baltzell knows that; now it’s just a matter of getting that message drilled into his athletes.
“We can go out there, we can lose, that’s a distinct possibility,” Baltzell said. “We’re not the only team in this conference that have really good resources and if we don’t go out there at our best we are going to lose and this streak is going to be over.”
The Rams return to action on Friday and Saturday between the Harvard Crimson Elite and URI Coaches Invitational. The URI Coaches Invitational will be the last time the Rams compete on their home track this season; they expect strong performances from the field group and the short sprint groups according to Baltzell.