Lions Have Strong Outing at Spire Midwest Open

GENEVA, Ohio – The Penn State Behrend men's track and field team competed in their second indoor outing on Saturday afternoon at the Spire Midwest Open.

Like the women, the men also competed against Division I and II teams and had a great day on the track and in the field.

Four Lions dominated the 600m run.  Matt McWilliams (Waterford, PA/Fort LeBoeuf) took 13th place at 1:25.56.  Josh Natalie (Erie, PA/Collegiate Academy) was close behind in 14th place with a time of 1:25.75.  Devin Beggs (Franklin, PA/Franklin) and Kevin Lai (Ridgewood, NJ/Ridgewood) took 16th and 17th place, respectively.  Beggs came in at 1:27.20 with Lai finishing in 1:27.49.  All four runners had times better than the previous school record set in 2011.

McWilliams competed in the mile run as well and was less than a second away from his own record.  The freshman placed 14th out of 44 runners with a time of 4:27.76.  Rounding out the top performers on the track was Denis Lydon (Plum, PA/Plum).  Lydon finished the 3000m run in 8:57.06 to place 15th out of 52 runners.

In the field, two athletes qualified for ECAC's.  Conor MacMannis (Stafford, VA/Kubeszki) took seventh in the high jump at 1.95m.  Dylan Bilka (Seven Fields, PA/Seneca Valley) had a distance good enough for ECAC's for the second straight week in the pole vault.  Bilka vaulted 4.75m for third place.

In the long jump, Geoffrey Faltot (Mercer, PA/Mercer) took eighth place with a distance of 6.23m.  John Cerminara (Williamsburg, VA/Jamestown) placed in the top-10 in the shot put.  Cerminara hit 14.07m for ninth place.

Behrend will be back in action on Saturday at the Mt. Union Invitational.  Start time is set for 10 a.m.