The Bates men's Distance Medley Relay team earned All-America honors as they raced to the finish in 9:51.53 at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships on Friday, taking fourth place in a field of 12 teams.
Sophomore
Ross Tejeda (Milton, Mass.), junior
Truman Williams (Montclair, N.J.), junior
Calvin Capelle (Laguna Beach, Calif.) and senior captain
Ned Farrington (Cohasset, Mass.) become the first Bates men's DMR team to earn All-America honors since 2015, and their fourth-place finish is the second-best ever for a Bates men's DMR team on the national stage.
Farrington, who anchored the race with the mile run, becomes the first Bates men's track and field athlete to earn All-America honors in both cross country and indoor track & field
in the same school year since
Matt Twiest '00 did it in 1997-98.
"We knew based off the race the week before at Tufts that anything could happen," head coach
Curtis Johnson said. "We were seeded eighth but these guys knew they could outperform their seeding. From lunch to dinner through warmups and practices, this group has been having fun, staying engaged, and saying 'why not us?'"
The Bobcats held steady through the first three legs of the race. Tejeda got things going with a 3:02.40 split in the 1,200 meters, putting the Bobcats in fifth. Then he handed off to Williams, who ran a split of 48.98 seconds in the 400 meters, maintaining the fifth-place positioning for the Bobcats. Capelle held his own in the 800 meters, handing off to Farrington after recording a split of 1:54.55. At this point, the Bobcats were in eighth, right on the edge of All-America (top-8) honors.
Farrington and the rest of the milers stayed pretty steady, until the last 600 meters, when things really picked up. Then Farrington found the juice to turn a solid day into one of the best in recent Bates men's track and field history.
"In the last 100 meters, Ned made a big move, a final kick, and passed about three guys to get into fifth," Johnson said. "The runner for the team that was in fourth, collapsed, and Ned did the rest. It felt like other teams were going backwards at the end, Ned was so fast."
Farrington ran a 4:05.62 mile, moving Bates from eighth into fourth place at the end of the race. It was the third-fastest mile split out of the 12 teams in the race. The Bobcats edged regional rival and top seed MIT, as the Engineers crossed the finish line in 9:51.89.
"I lost my voice during the first leg," Johnson said. "This is a huge day for our program and we can't wait to get the outdoor season started."
