two qualify for ecac at armory

Senior Joseph Dyer cleared six feet in the high jump indoors for the first time.

On Friday the 13th, the Muhlenberg track and field teams were lucky to be competing at the New York City Armory, one of the fastest indoor tracks in the country. The Mules sent only 24 athletes but came back with a large number of strong performances.

Senior David Chorney and sophomore Bobby Torphy recorded ECAC-qualifying times in the mile and 800 meters, respectively. Chorney’s fourth-place time of 4:17.00 missed the school record by the slimmest of margins (one one-hundredth of a second) and was a full three seconds fast than any previous mile clocking in the Centennial Conference this year.

Torphy crossed the finish line in 1:57.03, improving his personal best by 1.29 seconds and finishing eighth. He also ran on the 4x400 relay team – along with juniors Brendan Kirk and William Ryan and freshman Peter Rice – that posted the second-fastest clocking (3:26.57) in school history.

Rice, for his part, ran a 51.78 in the 400, landing in fourth place on the Mules’ all-time performance list. His time was just two hundredths of a second off the top time in the CC going into the weekend.

For the women, freshman Jenna Schaffer finished the 200 in 27.29 seconds, the fourth-best time in team history. Sophomore Hannah Mitchell finished ninth in the 1,000 meters, knocking nearly two seconds off her personal best.