Central Michigan Life

Issue date: 4/7/08 Section: Sports

Junior distance runner Sean Anthony clears a hurdle Saturday at Bennett Track in the 2,000-meter steeplechase. Anthony won the event. [Click to enlarge]

Freshman jumper Oz Lifshitz flies through the air in the long jump Saturday at Bennett Track. Lifshitz finished third in the event with a jump of 6.69 meters. [Click to enlarge]

The men's track and field team lost handily to Eastern Michigan on Saturday with just five event wins.

The Eagles beat CMU 115-59 in the CMU Open at Bennett Track.

"It's kind of ugly, but Eastern is a very good team," said coach Jim Knapp. "They have huge numbers in the dual meet setting and they have big numbers for everything. There were several events that we didn't even enter."

Earning wins for the Chippewas were freshmen Matt Erdmans in the 800-meter run (1 minute, 55.24 seconds), Sammy Kiprotich in the 3,000m (8:41.21), junior Sean Anthony in the 2,000m steeplechase (6:22.83) and senior Joe Hasler in the pole vault (15-0). The 4x100m relay team also won with a time of 42.58 seconds.

Anthony ran in an event that was unfamiliar to him. The steeplechase is an event that he only has run four times.

"I haven't done it very often," he said. "It's a really tough event because you have to hurdle stuff, it's long and there is the water barrier, last year it was a little bit harder for me but this year I am a lot stronger of a runner and I am more familiar with it."

Knapp was impressed by Anthony's race, and believes he may be running the event regularly.

"Sean is one of those young men who comes to work everyday and leaves everything he has on the track," Knapp said. "I was real happy for him because he is a distance runner and that steeple could be a good event for him."

With a predominantly young team that has a combination of only 13 juniors and seniors out of the 44 athletes, Knapp understands his team is working with new talent.

"Our strength is in our younger people and they are beginning to understand what this level of competition is so they are going to look a little better each week," he said.

One of the young players who impressed Knapp was Erdmans in the 800m run.

"I was very pleased with Matt Erdmans, our freshman, who has been struggling to be successful in college," he said. "He showed me the toughness that I recruited when he was in high school, I was real pleased with him in the 800."

Knapp did see improvement in the opening outdoor meet compared to the end of the indoor season, in which CMU finished last in the Mid-American Conference.

"I saw a lot of good effort out there," he said. "We were more focused, we were more competitive and in the events that we entered we did very well."

Despite the loss, Knapp believes the meet against EMU, which was Central's first of the outdoor season, will help the team in the long run.

"We challenged them to be tougher mentally and to compete and we did more of that today than we did in the indoor season at anytime," he said. "We are a better team today than we were in the indoor conference meet and we just need to keep moving on that and working towards the outdoor conference championship."

CMU splits up Friday - some athletes compete at the Spartan Invitational in East Lansing, while others go to the Sea Ray Relays in Knoxville, Tenn.



sports@cm-life.com

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