March 7, 2010
Complete Results
BOSTON - Four Navy men's distance runners earned All-East honors and the Midshipmen posted the program's fastest 4x800 in more than 25 years highlighting a strong effort on the final day of the 2010 IC4A Indoor Championships at Boston University on Sunday afternoon.
Navy finished eighth overall after earning 28 points on the weekend (22 points on Sunday), the most by any school in the Patriot League. It is the sixth time that Navy has finished among the top-10 schools at the IC4A Championship during head coach Stephen Cooksey's tenure (which began in 1988-89) and the first time since 2006, when they finished ninth.
"We're pretty happy with the team's overall performance this weekend," said Cooksey. "We ran right at some of our best times of the year and had a number of season-best times. It's always nice to see everything come together at championship time."
Albany led all teams with 68.5 points, while George Mason (65 points), Liberty (45.5 points), Cornell (45.5 points) and Delaware State (37 points) rounded out the top five.
Dominic Della Pelle (So., Kennett Square, Pa.), Jeremy Haney (So., Palmyra, Va.) Andrew Hanko (Jr., Montville, N.J.) and Cody Rome (So., Eagle, Idaho) each finished within the top-eight in their respective distance events to claim All-East honors. Together with indoor team captain Mark Van Orden's third-place weight throw finish on Saturday, Navy had five individual athletes garner All-East honors over the course of the two-day regional championship meet.
Della Pelle earned the Midshipmen's top individual finish on the weekend, with a runner-up showing in the 1,000-meter run. Della Pelle, who picked up his second career All-East certificate (he finished sixth in the mile a year ago), took second behind Fordham's Kevin Fitzgerald with a time of 2:29.11, earning eight team points for Navy. Jeremy Haney also took home All-East laurels after placing eighth in the event with a time of 2:32.40.
In the 5,000-meter run, Andrew Hanko turned in a career-best time of 14:19.69 to earn third-place points for the Mids. His effort ranks as the seventh-fastest 5K in program history. Hanko now stands fifth all-time among the program's fastest 5K performers, with only John Mentzer ('98), Todd Washburn ('93), Bruce Frame ('95), and John Clopeck ('84) having ever produced faster times as a Midshipman.
Rome, meanwhile, placed eighth in a competitive mile field with a time of 4:11.36 to round out Navy's individual scorers on the afternoon.
Navy's 4x800-meter foursome of Della Pelle, George Stevenson (So., Twinsburg, Ohio), David Ash (Jr., Williamston, Mich.), and Matthew Evers (So., Bellevue, Neb.) shaved more than seven seconds off Saturday's qualifying time (7:37.71) and placed third with a season-best effort of 7:30.01, just 1.83 seconds off the winning pace set by the University at Albany.
The effort stands as the third-fastest time in school history and is the Midshipmen's top performance in the event since Lloyd Wright, Jeff Wolstenholme, Jere Fisher and Dallas Roper teamed up to run a 7:27.39 in February of 1983.
"Coming off the last three weeks with several of our guys doubling and tripling up at the Patriot League Championship and last weekend's Star Meet, I'd say that we received some remarkable individual performances this weekend," said Navy distance coach Al Cantello. "We thought we might have gone to the well one too many times, but fortunately it didn't work out that way."
The Mids will return to action on Saturday, March 20 when they kick off the outdoor slate with their annual trip to San Diego for the Point Loma Invitational.
## Go Navy! ##
