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Sports

Malatesta Continues His Dominance for Chatham Indoor Track

Others join sophomore on the podium.

Students still on winter break packed the Drew University Indoor track on Wednesday for the 12th annual Len Pietrewicz Polar Bear Invitational.

Like other events in the indoor track series at Drew, no scores are kept, but medals are awarded for top six finishes in each event.

Chatham dominated the boys junior varsity 600 meter run as sophomore Anthony Malatesta took first place out of a field of 51. Sophomore Corey Black finished third and sophomore Luke Freeman took ninth. Malatesta set a meet record and placed first in the 800 meter event on Monday at the Racine Invitational as well.

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Malatesta said the Cougars have room for improvement.

"Our distance team is very strong, but we are weak on throwing and jumping," Malatesta said. "For me, the season is going all right, but we've had a lot of injuries and illnesses."

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Chatham's shot-putters, however came close to earning a medal. Junior Jake Neumann's finished eighth out of 68 with a throw of 42 feet, 11 inches—eight inches short of placing in the top six.

Freshman Brad Cook took home a medal for Chatham in the day's second event with his fifth place finish in the boys freshman 55 meter hurdles event. Junior Peter Basso also took home another medal for Chatham, finishing fifth out of 64 in the junior varsity boys 55 meter dash with a time of 7.53 seconds.

Chatham's girls also won several medals. Sophomore Tara Hanley earned the first medal of the day for the team with her fifth place finish 1600 meter run with a time of 5:27.94—higher than any other sophomore at the meet.

The second medal of the day for Chatham's girls team came when freshman Alex Conforti finished second in the girls junior varsity 1000 meter run. Cougar Kathleen Lavelle won fifth place—and a medal—in that race.

A few meet records were broken at the Polar Bear Invitational this year. Westfield's Jhakyse Williams ran a personal best of 6.63 seconds in the 55 meter dash, breaking the the previous mark of 6.65. That record was set in 2005.

In one of the most exciting events of the day, a meet record was set in the high jump by Summit's Mark Jones, who broke the previous record of 6 feet 8 inches with his 6 foot, 8 1/2 inch leap. The crowd was silent as Jones tried but failed for 6 feet, 10 inches, and as Jones hit the bar and went down to the mat with it, the crowd responded with a collective sigh, followed by applause.

"He is the best we ever had," Summit coach Adam Fern said of Jones.

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