The University of Rhode Island men’s track and field team competed in the New England Indoor Track and Field Championship on Friday and Saturday, where the Rams took home first place.
It marked the sixth straight regional indoor championship for the team, just a week after winning the indoor conference championship.
The Rams kept the top spot on the podium warm from the Atlantic 10 Indoor Championship, with six Rams taking top spots.
Third-year sprinter Alex Arbogast got things rolling in the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.77 seconds to take first place. First-year Lucas Andrade took care of the other 60-meter race in the 60-meter hurdles with a first-place finish in 7.93 seconds.
The underclassmen dominance continued into the 500-meter, as first-year sprinter Elias Sposato took home first place with a time of 1:02.82 after finishing second in the preliminary race. First-year Jeremy Roe also finished first in the 1,000-meter with a time of 2:27.34.
The Rams also captured the top two spots in the high jump, as second-year Cam Miller cleared 2.09 meters for first place and first-year Josia Katroli matched the height of 2.09 meters on his second attempt for second.
Fifth-year Joachim Ennoo kept Rhody’s foot on the gas with a mark of 7.56 meters in the long jump, good enough for first place. Second place also went to URI, as third-year Nathan Shultz totaled a jump of 7.25 meters.
With URI taking home every New England Indoor Championship since 2021, Rhode Island Head Coach Trent Baltzell comes in with a similar expectation year after year.
“I think it is a bit routine,” Baltzell said. “We feel as if it’s our civic duty to go there with the intent of doing as well as we can do. The nice thing about the New England Championships is it’s a little more low-key than the A-10s, so we tend to come out of New England with really good vibes as long as we don’t have injuries, which we didn’t.”
Going into the meet, Baltzell made some decisions on who would participate in each event, and he was optimistic about how those decisions would impact the team’s overall success.
“We weren’t quite sure with this one,” Baltzell said. “We had kept our top eight guys from the A-10 Championships out of the meet. We felt as if we were the best team in New England, but just because that’s the case, it didn’t mean that you’re going to go in there and win, especially when you’re missing a lot of your top performers. Once the performance list came out, we were confident that we could win, but we would still have to have a pretty good meet.”
Not only did the Rams have a pretty good meet, but they would do it dominantly. URI won by a margin of 44 points over second-place University of New Hampshire, finishing with 149 points.
For Baltzell, this meant more than just putting points on the board.
“It gave everybody on our team an opportunity where they could shine individually,” Baltzell said. “Maybe they didn’t have that opportunity at the Atlantic 10 Championships because either they weren’t there or they were focusing on the relays. This was a really cool opportunity for anyone on our team to compete at their highest level.”
Overall, Baltzell is pleased with the outcome of the weekend.
“I felt like we actually had an outstanding meet,” Baltzell said. “From top to bottom, we had PRs, we had top 10’s and we had six event wins. We’re going to continue to do this one because it really serves us well as a program, and we had a good time.”
Coming off a back-to-back weekend with a championship win, the Rams will switch over to the outdoor season in Orlando, Fla., for the University of Central Florida’s Black and Gold Challenge on March 20.
