Wabash will have seven athletes in Saturday's finals of the 2007 North Coast Athletic Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships at Denison University in addition to the rest of the competition in the scheduled events. The Little Giants are tied for third after the first day of action on the track.
Senior Ben Tritle started the scoring for the Little Giants, finishing fifth in the shot put with a distance of 14.10 meters in the finals. He advanced out of the prelims with a first round mark of 14.03 meters.
Freshman Emmanuel Aouad added the final team points in the first day with a sixth place finish in the triple jump. He advanced to the finals after a leap of 12.78 meters, then posted a mark of 13.04 meters in finals competition.
Joining the Little Giant athletes already slated to compete in Saturday's preliminary and final events are qualifiers from Friday's prelims. Aouad is part of that group, advancing to the finals of the 55-meter hurdles with a time of 7.82. His qualifying time was over 1/10th of a second faster than the rest of field. Sophomore Bobby Kimp will represent Wabash in the 55-meter dash after finishing with a time of 6.75 in Friday's prelims.
The duo of Geoff Lambert and Nathan Bates advanced to the finals. Lambert ran a 1:58.43 in the prelims for the second-best qualifying time, while Bates was third in the prelims with a time of 1:58.29.
Juniors Bart Banach and Mike Russell will compete in the 400-meter dash finals. Banach posted the fourth-best time in the preliminary round (51.98). Russell was fifth in the prelims (52.04). Teammate Tim Rickard just missed a chance to put three Wabash runners in the 400 finals, finishing one spot out in 10th place in the prelims.
Richard Roomes made the finals in the 200-meter dash, taking the last spot with a time of 23.48.
Wabash is tied with Ohio Wesleyan in third place with each school scoring sevent points. Defending champion Allegheny is in first with 62 points, followed by the College of Wooster with 19. Earlham is fifth (6). Denison (5), Wittenberg (5), Oberlin (4), Hiram (2), and Kenyon (0) round out the team scoring.
The championship meet concludes Saturday afternoon.
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