two men's track athletes crossing the barrier for the steeplechase

Tartans Finish Second at All-Atlantic Region Championships

(BETHLEHEM, Pa.) - The Carnegie Mellon University men's track and field team finished second at the two-day All-Atlantic Region Outdoor Track and Field Championships hosted by Moravian University with sophomore Thomas Rich (Rochester, N.Y. / Brighton) taking the decathlon title with a school-record point total of 6,464.

Rich won five of the 10 events, finished third in one, fourth in three, and sixth in one amongst the seven competitors. His winning marks came in the following events:

Long Jump - 7.07m
400m - 50.84 seconds
100m - 11.19 seconds
110 hurdles - 15.33 seconds
Discus - 34.63m

Senior Varun Narayan (Princeton, N.J. / Princeton) won the long jump with a career leap of 7.36 meters which moves him from third-best in program history to second.

Freshman Aleksei Seletskiy (Palo Alto, Calif. / Palo Alto) won the 1,500-meter run with a meet-record and school-record time of 3:47.65 with freshman Colin McLaughlin (Stamford, Conn. / Westhill) coming in second in 3:49.91 which ranks fourth in program history. Freshman Eamon Brady (Park Ridge, Ill. / Maine South) also had a career-best time in the race with a final time of 3:55.51.

Junior Elijah Sech (San Clemente, Calif. / San Clemente) and sophomore David Durdaller (Hewlett, N.Y. / George W. Hewlett) competed in the 3,000-meter steeplechase finishing second and third, respectively. Sech's time of 9:10.66 and Durdaller's time of 9:12.56 are both career-bests with Sech's time now fourth best in program history.

Freshman Matthew Coyle (Park / Maine South) placed second in the 5,000-meter run in a time of 14:49.65.

Freshman Cody Breidenbach (Nazareth, Pa. / Nazareth Area) took second in the hammer throw with a career-best mark of 56.32 meters which is second-best in program history and 16th nationally this year. Freshman Luke Blackwell (Doylestown, Pa. / Central Bucks East) had a mark of 13.87 meters in the triple jump, an outdoor season best, to place sixth.

Sophomore Alex Ivanov (Newton, Mass. / Newton) placed second in the 800-meter run with a career-best time of 1:51.11 which is now second-best in program history.

Senior Grant Johnson (Wilmette, Ill. / New Trier) was third to cross the finsih line in the 400-meter hurdles in a time of 52.94 seconds. That time is a career-best and second in program history, and ties him for ninth in the nation. Sophomore Andrew McGovern (Lexington, Mass. / Lexington) followed Johnson with an eight-place finish in 53.75 seconds.

Junior Alex Halkias (Berlin, Conn. / Berlin) was fourth in the 200-meter run with a time of 21.65 seconds.

The Tartans will now wait for the NCAA to announce the athletes selected to the 2022 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships which will be held in Geneva, Ohio, from Thursday, May 26 through Saturday, May 28.