The Muhlenberg men’s track and field team will try to duplicate its second-place indoor finish when it competes at the Centennial Conference Outdoor Championships this weekend at Ursinus.

The meet opens on Friday with events in the men’s decathlon and the women’s

Hayes will try to become the first Muhlenberg male athlete to win the same event at a conference meet thre times.

heptathlon, then begins in earnest Saturday morning. A full slate of events is scheduled both Saturday and Sunday.

The Mule men have been working their way up the CC ladder since back-to-back ninth-place finishes at the 1997 and 1998 outdoor meets. They came in eighth in 1999, sixth in 2000 and third last year. Muhlenberg scored a program-best second-place finish, behind perennial champion Haverford, at the 2002 indoor meet.

Ironically, the Mules did not have a gold medalist at the indoor championships. The team’s lone retuning CC champion is senior Jim Hayes, who has won the javelin each of the last two years. The javelin was a key to the Mules’ showing last year, giving them 27 of their 111 team points. Sophomore Randy Holak and Hayes have the top two distances in the CC this year.

Muhlenberg also figures to score well in the pole vault, where junior Jason App and sophomore Matt Frye have the second- and third-best marks in the CC. App finished third outdoors last year and indoors this year.

Freshman John Brodowski has the league’s top score in the decathlon and is also rated in the top 10 in the 110 high hurdles, 400 intermediate hurdles, long jump and javelin.

The women finished in sixth place last year for their best showing ever at the CC outdoor meet. Two freshmen won gold at the indoor championships – Meghan Douglas-Snyder in the pole vault and Ashlie Hankee in the 55-meter hurdles – and both will be top contenders outdoors.

Senior Nancy Kegelman has placed second in the javelin each of the last two years and has the CC’s second-best throw heading into the CC Championships this season. Senior Katie Garrett ranks third in the steeplechase, a first-time event for women at the CC meet.

The first Centennial Conference championship tournament in baseball begins on Friday when Muhlenberg travels to Ursinus for a 3:30 game.

The tournament follows an unusual format that heavily favors top-seeded Johns Hopkins (32-16,

Junior Justin Graf, the Mules’ leadoff batter, leads the team in both runs scored (39) and RBI (29) and has belted five home runs, including three in the last four games.

16-2), which tied Franklin & Marshall (29-8, 16-2) for the regular-season title but earned the top seed by virtue of its sweep of the Diplomats. The loser of Friday’s game is eliminated. The winner travels to Johns Hopkins to face F&M on Saturday at 11:00. The winner of that game then plays a best two-of-three series against the eighth-ranked Blue Jays. The first game is scheduled for 3:30 on Saturday, the second for 12:00 on Sunday, with the third, if necessary, to follow immediately.

Muhlenberg is the newcomer in a field that features the only three teams ever to win the CC baseball championship, which was determined by regular-season play until this year. Johns Hopkins won titles in 1994, 1997, 1998 and 2001; Ursinus was the champ in 1996, 1999 and 2000; and Franklin & Marshall captured the championship in 1995. The winner of this weekend’s tournament receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The Mules (21-15, 11-7) split with Ursinus (20-17, 13-5) during the regular season, each team winning at home. The Bears won, 6-1, on March 27, in the CC opener for both teams, but Muhlenberg came back to post a 3-2 win two days later. In the latter game, which broke the Mules’ 10-game losing streak to Ursinus, the Bears had two runners thrown out at home plate, including the potential tying run in the top of the eighth.

Ursinus leads the all-time series 34-25-1 and has defeated Muhlenberg nine straight times in Collegeville. The Mules’ last win at Ursinus came in 1992, two years before the start of CC play.

Should the Mules defeat Ursinus, they would then face an F&M squad that was the only team to sweep them in a doubleheader this year. The Diplomats won by 5-1 and 6-5 scores on April 20. Muhlenberg has been a thorn in the side of Johns Hopkins, winning five of the last eight meetings, including a doubleheader sweep in Baltimore in 1999 and a split last Saturday.