Tartans Place Second at UAA Indoor Championships

(CLEVLAND, Ohio) - The Carnegie Mellon University men's track and field team placed second at the University Athletic Association (UAA) Indoor Track and Field Championships hosted by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The Tartans scored 150 points to finish behind Washington University in St. Louis with 176.5 points.

Senior Justin Kiefel (Downingtown, Pa. / Downingtown STEM Academy) won the triple jump with a mark of 14.45 meters. A pair of freshmen, Luke Blackwell (Doylestown, Pa. / Central Bucks East) and Sebastian Sanso (Santa Cruz, Calif. / Santa Cruz), finished second and sixth, respectively. Blackwell recorded a jump of 13.54 meters and Sanso 12.82 meters.

In the shot put, graduate student Bram Miller (Colgate, Wis. / Kettle Moraine Lutheran) won the event with a throw of 16.95 meters while junior Bailey O'Malley (Pittsburgh, Pa. / Baldwin) placed second with a toss of 15.39 meters.

A season-best height for freshman Casey Potrebic (Calistoga, Calif. / Justin-Siena) in the pole vault of 4.11 meters placed third.

On the track, sophomore Andrew McGovern (Lexington, Mass. / Lexington) won the 800-meter run in a personal-best time of 1:55.18 with classmate Alex Ivanov (Newton, Mass. / Newton) taking second in 1:55.29, also a personal-best.

Freshman Aleksei Seletskiy (Palo Alto, Calif. / Palo Alto) placed third in the mile run with a season-best time of 4:11.56, as his classmate Colin McLaughlin (Stamford, Conn. / Westhill) also crossed with a season-best time of 4:13.17 to place sixth.

Sophomore Thomas Rich (Rochester, N.Y. / Brighton) ran a personal-best time in the 60-meter hurdles of 8.56 seconds, placing fifth. Junior Alex Halkias (Berlin, Conn. / Berlin) raced to a fourth-place finish in the 200-meter dash in 22.62. In the 400-meter run, graduate student Grant Johnson (Wilmette, Ill. / New Trier) placed sixth after crossing in 50.89.

Senior Michael OBroin (Park Ridge, Ill. / Saint Ignatius College Prep) ran a personal-best time of 8:28.08 in the 3,000-meter run and placed fourth.

The 4x400-meter relay team of senior Michael Cai (Dumont, N.J. / Bergen County Academies), Johnson, sophomore Pranav Rajbhandari (Marietta, Ga. / Walton) and McGovern recorded a time of 3:24.18 to place fourth in the last event of the championships.

The Tartans will next compete at the All-Atlantic Regional Championships hosted by Nazareth College on March 4-5.