Rutgers Roundup

Selected members of the Rutgers women's indoor track and field team participated in the NYU Fast Track Invitational on Friday, Feb. 29, at the Armory Track and Field Center in New York City.

"We only took a handful of studentathletes in order to give them an opportunity to qualify and prepare for the ECAC Championships next weekend," said head coach James Robinson. "A few of them were successful in garnering ECAC qualifiers and we were pleased to see their continued progress."

Senior Karen Langner placed second in the pole vault, clearing an ECAC qualifying height of 11'93/4". Also finishing second in their respective event was freshman Nwamaka Okobi in the long jump. Okobi recorded an ECAC qualifying jump of 18'7 3/4", while classmate Jamie Walker took fourth in the long jump with a leap of 18'41/4".

Junior Bryanna Johnson ran 8.99 in the preliminaries of the 60-meter hurdles. She qualified for the finals with the sixthfastest time in the trials, but did not run in the final race. SeniorAlexis Gray placed sixth in the 1,000-meter with a time of 3:01.32.

The Scarlet Knights will return to action for the 2008 ECAC Indoor Championships on March 8, in Boston.

Sophomore Justin Pennington netted a career-high five goals, however it wasn't enough as a dominant second half propelled Delaware to a 10-8 victory over Rutgers in a top-20men's lacrosse game at the RU Turf Field Saturday afternoon.

In addition to Pennington's five goals, sophomore Gerhard Buehning, freshman Kory Kelly and sophomore Tad Stanwick each chipped in a score. Buehning led the team for the second straight game with two assists.

No. 12 Delaware, which improves to 4- 0 for the third straight season, was led by Martin Cahill and Vincent Giordano, who each tallied three goals. The Blue Hens are 9-1 in their last 10 games away from Newark, with the lone loss coming in the 2007 NCAA semifinals to eventual national champion Johns Hopkins.

RU fell behind early, 2-0, as Giordano and Cam Howard posted scores for the Blue Hens before Kelly got the Scarlet Knights on the board with his fourth goal of the season at the 4:12 mark in the first quarter. The teams would trade goals back and forth until a 3-0 RU run ended the first half. The spurt was capped with a Buehning tally with 3:23 remaining, putting the Scarlet Knights up 5-4 at the intermission.

Rutgers would push its run to 4-0 and take the lead, 6-4, on Pennington's fourth goal of the day just over a minute into the third quarter. However, Delaware held RU scoreless for nearly 24 minutes and posted six straight goals to grab a 10-6 lead midway through the fourth quarter. Five of UD's six goals in that span came in just under two minutes.

Rutgers will continue its three-game home stand and begin ECAC league play Saturday, March 8, when the Scarlet Knights take on Fairfield. Game time is set for 1 p.m. at the RU Turf Field.