third-place finishes for track teams;
more golds, honors for faust

With the finish line rapidly approaching and a Franklin & Marshall runner on his left, Peter Rice dove forward, touching down six hundredths of a second ahead of his

To help the distance runners cope with the excessive heat and humidity, Swarthmore set up a sprinkler at one of the turns in the 5,000. Here Lynch runs through the raindrops en route to her silver in a race that featured runners who had posted three of the top 12 times in Division III this season.

Diplomat opponent to snag second place in the 400 meters.

Rice’s effort was typical of the Muhlenberg track and field teams at the Centennial Conference Outdoor Championships. They gave everything they had to earn every possible point, and when the three-day meet was complete, they could not have done much better. The Mule men finished in third place and the women tied for third.

Senior Alex Faust closed out her CC career with another spectacular day, winning two

Senior Brendan Kirk medaled in the 400 hurdles for the fourth year in a row, taking a bronze.

more gold medals in the 200 and 400. She did not need to duplicate Rice’s final dive to take the 400, winning by an unbelievable margin of 1.22 seconds, breaking her own school record and easily eclipsing the NCAA provisional qualifying mark. Faust missed the NCAA provisional standard in the 200 by five hundredths of a second but broke the school record she set in the prelims. She also anchored the 4x400 relay team that missed the school record by 0.19 seconds.

Faust, who repeated her 200-400-pole vault triple crown from the CC indoor meet, was named Most Outstanding Performer for field events for the third time in her career – the first time outdoors. She won a total of 14 CC gold medals in her career.

Rice kicked off an outstanding afternoon for the Muhlenberg men’s team and himself by running the lead leg of the 4x100 relay team in the first race of the final day. Sophomore Kyle Sullivan, freshman Isaiah Vaughn and senior Jeremiah Lachaud followed with the baton, crossing the finish line in 42.38 to win the gold medal and break the school record by almost a second. Rice later won another gold in the 200, broke his own school record in the 400 and anchored the third-place 4x400 relay team.

All three of Rice’s 4x100 teammates also placed in the 100 and 200, with Lachaud, Vaughn and Sullivan going 2-3-4, respectively, in the 100.

Also winning silver medals for the men were junior Bobby Torphy in the 800 and sophomore Marc Brookland in the triple jump.

For the women, senior Jennifer Lynch took home a pair of silvers, finishing second to the Most Outstanding Performer for track events in both the 1,500 and 5,000. Freshman Colette Faust placed second in the high jump, and sophomore Kimberlee Yalango won a bronze medal by finishing third in the 800.

Alex Faust receives the J. Edward Skeath Award from Ann Wertz Skeath, widow of the Swarthmore school-record holder in the 440 yards. The award went to the men’s and women’s 400-meter champions.

Senior Joseph Dyer placed sixth in the triple jump and seventh in the high jump. He set a personal record of 42-7¼ in the triple.