Track Has Busy Weekend in Staten Island

This article originally appeared in The Fordham Ram in December 2018.

The Fordham track and field team participated in two meets this weekend at the Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex on Staten Island. The first of the two meets was the NYC Gotham Cup, which was held on Friday night. This event showcased the best that Fordham’s team and individual runners had to offer.

The best individual finish of the night came from sophomore Nicholas Raefski, who ran 3,000 meters in 8:50.85 and finished fourth. The Rams netted another top-ten finish when fellow sophomore Christopher Strzelinski came in ninth in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:33.92. However, these would be the only top-ten finishes Fordham’s individual runners would earn; in the field events, no Fordham athlete finished higher than 21st on either the men’s or the women’s side. The Rams did salvage some success in the 4×800 relays, as both the men’s and women’s teams finished third. The men completed the relay with a time of 8:12.36, while the women finished in nine minutes and just over 47 seconds.

But when the Rams came back for more on Saturday, things did not get easier.

The men finished sixth out of eight teams, while the women came in second-to-last out of ten. It was not all bad news for Fordham though, as several of its athletes had excellent performances on the day. Perhaps the star of the afternoon was senior Angelina Grebe, whose season-low time of 10:11.38 was good enough for fourth in the 3,000-meter run. In fact, five of the seven top-ten individual performances in the track events on Saturday came on the women’s side. Freshman Bridget Alex finished ninth in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 10:37.46. There were also two top-ten Fordham finishes in the 400-meter dash, as sophomore Sarinnagh Budris and freshman Dominique Valentine finished ninth and 10th, respectively, with times just under a minute. In the 200-meter dash, sophomore Kathryn Kelly earned the lone top-ten performance for the Rams with a 25.21 time.

Over on the men’s side, freshman Michael Capone placed ninth with a 7.21-second 60-meter dash while freshman Manuel Alfonso Guzman finished sixth in the same race with a time of 7.13 seconds. Once again, one of the most impressive performers was junior Ryan Kutch, who put up a time of 4:16.77 in the mile run, which placed him 14th overall and qualified him for IC4A.

“It felt good,” Kutch said of his performance. However, he also said, “it was disappointing I couldn’t get a personal best.”

The Rams’ next event is this weekend at Boston University. The team will compete in the annual Terrier Classic.

“These early races help identify certain strengths and weaknesses for people, so it’s a good test for seeing those types of things,” Kutch said. “Most guys ran great at the meet and are in great shape, which is awesome, but for some we have to just equate that great shape to racing better and smarter.”