Record-holding sprinter Isaiah Spofford ’15 will try the 400 meters this spring.
Photo by Tom Leonard ’78.

Spofford holds the Bates record in the 60-meter dash, 7.09 seconds. While the 60-meter event is only a few years old, head coach Al Fereshetian points out that Spofford’s 55 time would be 10th-best in Bates history.

The point, Fereshetian tells reporter Travis Lazarczyk, is that Spofford is fast and getting faster. “Our expectations are very high. He put in a fantastic fall of training.”

Spofford is runninf the 60- and 200-meter sprints this winter, then will add the 400 during the outdoor season. “Ever since I was a sophomore in high school, people have told me I’ll ease into the 400,” Spofford tells Lazarczyk. “This year I think it’s going to happen.”

• View story from the Morning Sentinel, Jan. 8, 2013

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Bobcats finished sixth at the meet, their best performance ever at nationals.

The video was produced by Bates photographer and videographer Mike Bradley, himself a former collegiate runner.

The Bates College men’s cross country team is ranked ninth nationally among NCAA Division III institutions, and the women’s soccer team made its debut in the national polls on Tuesday, ranking 21st.

The men’s cross country team has won three meets this season, including the State of Maine championship last weekend. The Bobcats’ lone finish outside of first came at the Open New England Championships, where Bates was 12th overall and fourth among D-III schools. The Bobcats have been ranked nationally all season, with this week’s ranking the highest in the tenure of head coach Al Fereshetian, in his ninth season at Bates.

The women’s soccer team is ranked third in New England, moving up from sixth last week. The Bobcats, now 8-2-1 overall, 3-2-1 NESCAC, posted a 6-0 win over Skidmore and a 4-0 win over Wesleyan last week. With three games remaining in the regular season, Bates sits in fourth in the NESCAC standings.

The men’s soccer team is also regionally ranked, sitting in ninth place in the New England polls. The Bobcats, who tied Wesleyan 1-1 on Saturday, are 7-2-1, 2-2-1 and are in sixth place in the conference standings with four games remaining.

Both soccer teams play a pair of road games this week, facing Trinity on Wednesday and Middlebury on Saturday. The men’s cross country team has this weekend off, but will compete for the NESCAC title next weekend at Colby.

Visit the Bates Athletics Web site for the latest information on Bates varsity sports.

Liz Wanless was named the U.S. Track Coaches Association Female Regional Athlete of the Year, and Al Fereshetian was selected as the USTCA Men’s Regional Coach of the Year for New England on Wednesday night.

Wanless ’04 (Belleville, Ill.) won the shot put at the 2004 NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships with a meet record throw and has won the event at the New England Small College Athletic Conference Championships, the Division III New England Championships and the ECAC Championships during the outdoor track season. She enters the outdoor national championships as the top seed in the shot put with a toss of 53 feet, one inch, leading the field by more than five feet.

Fereshetian led the Bobcat men to the best season in program history entering the NCAA championships. Bates won the State of Maine Championship, then finished second at NESCAC’s, D-III New England’s and ECAC’s. The team also finished seventh at the Open New England Championships, tied for first among NCAA Division III institutions.

Bates has six men and two women entered in the 2004 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Millikin University in Decatur, Ill. Competition begins on Thursday at 11 a.m. CST.

Bates College junior Justin Easter of Jay, Maine, has produced the College’s second national champion in as many days, winning the 3,000-meter steeplechase today at the NCAA Division III track and field championships at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. Senior hammer thrower Jaime Sawler of Stratham, N.H., won his second career national championship on Thursday, capturing the hammer throw.

Easter, the top seed in the steeplechase headed into the national championships, won the race with a time of 9:02.02. He defeated second-place finisher Ryan Reed of Pacific Lutheran College by just over three-tenths of a second. Easter jumped out to an early lead during the first lap, then fell back into the pack for the next three laps. With about a mile to go, he returned to the front of the pack, stretching his lead to about 15 meters. Easter held off a hard-charging Reed to earn his first national championship. He had finished seventh and third in his previous NCAA steeplechase races in 2000 and 2001.

Sawler, the top seed in the hammer entering the meet, won Thursday’s competition with a throw of 188 feet, six inches. He defeated runner-up Justin Minor of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater by seven-and-a-half feet.

Sawler completed the 2002 season undefeated against Division III competition, also winning the 35-pound weight during the indoor track and field season. Sawler is the third athlete in Bates history to win multiple NCAA titles. He joins Wayne Pangburn (class of 1966), who won the NCAA College Division championships in the hammer in 1965 and 1966, and John Fitzgerald (class of 1987), who won the indoor 5,000-meters in 1986 and the outdoor 10,000-meters in 1987.

Bates has now won 12 individual national track and field titles all time. Easter’s is the eighth outdoors and the fourth under current head coach Al Fereshetian. He is the first Bobcat runner to win a national title since Fitzgerald’s in the 10,000. Bates’ previous four titles were won by field athletes, including Sawler’s two.

Behind the two championship performances, Bates scored 20 points, the most-ever by a Bobcat team. They were eighth overall and second among New England teams. The University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse won the meet with 64 points, while Wheaton College was the top New England team in fifth place with 29 points. The eighth-place finish was also the school’s best-ever finish at the NCAA outdoor track championships and matches the second-highest in any championship. The 1977 men’s cross country team’s sixth place is the college’s standard as a member of Division III, while the 1996 women’s soccer team also finished in a tie for eighth.

Junior Kelley Puglisi of Scotia, N.Y., earned her first career All-America honor May 25 by finishing third in the 1,500-meter run. Puglisi, who entered the NCAA championships as the 11th seed, finished third with a school-record time of 4:37.92. She broke her own record, set at the New England Division III championships on May 7, by nine-hundredths of a second. Puglisi was the top finisher from New England in the event. She placed seven seconds behind champion Missy Buttry of Wartburg (Iowa) College. Puglisi is the fifth woman in Bates outdoor track and field history to earn All-America honors and the first in the 1,500-meter run. Her third-place finish was the highest by a Bobcat woman at the championships since Heather Bumps (class of 1997) placed third in the javelin in 1996.

The six points scored by Puglisi helped the Bobcats to a six-way tie for 38th place. The finish was the highest for the Bates women since 1996, when they finished in 37th place.

For more information on athletics at Bates, please visit our Web page.