Stonehill Matches Program Best with 5th Place at New England Indoor Championships


Junior All-American Nick Staley won his second-straight New England indoor high jump title with a season-best leap of 6-11.50.

Staley leads seven All-New England performances over the weekend with second-straight high jump championship 

BOSTON, Mass. (March 1, 2014) – Stonehill College, ranked second in this week's U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) Division II East Regional computer rankings, matched its previous team best by taking fifth place at the 2014 Men's New England Indoor Track & Field Championships, hosted by Boston University, at the BU Track & Tennis Center today.

Stonehill's fifth place team finish, second among Northeast-10 Conference members at the event, matches the previous high set in 2008. The Skyhawks finished with 33 points, while NE-10 Champion Southern Connecticut State University won the team title with 118 points, followed by the University of Rhode Island in second (99 points), Northeastern University (96) and the University of New Hampshire (42).

Junior All-American Nick Staley (Medway, Mass./BC High) successfully defended his indoor high jump New England title, marking his third straight New England championship for the event overall, as he improved his provisional qualifying mark for the NCAA Division II Championships in Winston-Salem, N.C., in two weeks with a season-best leap of 6-feet, 11.5-inches. Staley now ranks tenth nationally in Division II for the event after topping the field of 18 high jumpers today by 3.25-inches. He swept the New England indoor and outdoor high jump titles last season and picks up his third straight indoor All-New England performance.


Senior Xavier Dixon posted the second All-New England finish of his career in the 60-meter hurdles. (PHOTO BY Richard Orr)

Senior Xavier Dixon (New Bedford, Mass./New Bedford) earned indoor All-New England honors for the second time in his career in the 60-meter high hurdles with a fourth place finish in today's final in 8.06-seconds. He qualified for the final with the third fastest time in this morning's semifinal heats at 8.08-seconds after posting the second-fastest time in Friday's preliminary heats in 8.09.

Stonehill's 4x800-meter relay earned All-New England honors for the fourth straight year with a fourth place finish out of 19 teams in 7:42.33. Running the event for the Skyhawks, which was the top Division II team in the relay, were junior All-American Daniel Zawalich (Paxton, Mass./St. John's of Shrewsbury) with a 1:53.9 split on the lead leg, followed by sophomore Robert Massey (Chelmsford, Mass./Chelmsford) who completed the second leg in 1:57.1, while senior All-American Justin Blaszczyk (Saint James, N.Y./Smithtown) ran the third leg in 1:58.3 before junior All-American Patrick Cooney (Douglaston, N.Y./Archbishop Molloy) completed the anchor leg in 1:52.8. Blaszczyk, Cooney and Zawalich also earned All-New England honors with Stonehill's 4000-meter distance medley relay team that finished fourth in 9:57.31.

Senior Tyler Moules (Billerica, Mass./Billerica) earned All-New England honors for the first time in his career with a fifth place finish in the 500-meter dash finals this afternoon in 1:04.60 after placing ninth in 2013. He qualified for today's final with the fifth-fastest time overall among the 25 entries in yesterday's preliminary heats at 1:05.20.


Junior Tyler Moules earned All-New England honors for the 500-meter dash and also ran with the 4x400 relay.

Moules also ran a leg for Stonehill's 4x400-meter relay team that placed ninth in a school-record time of 3:18.08. Junior Robert Smith (Woburn, Mass./Woburn) ran the opening leg in 49.6-seconds, before handing the baton to Moules for a 50.1-second split on leg two, with junior Teague Grubel (Phoenix, Ariz./Shadow Mountain) running the third leg in 49.6-seconds and then freshman Matt Baldasare (Mansfield, Mass./Mansfield), who earned All-New England honors with the Skyhawks distance medley relay on Friday, completing the anchor leg in 48.6-seconds – an unofficial school-record pace. The relay team topped the previous school mark of 3:21.01 set by this exact team at BU earlier this season during the Valentine Invitational on February 8.

Freshman Tyler Henseler (Coventry, R.I./Bishop Hendricken) rounded out Stonehill's participants at the New England Championships by finishing 26th in the 3000-meter run with a time of 8:51.29.

On Friday, senior Stephen Leonard (Chatham, N.J./Chatham) and junior Bryan Wilcox (Plantsville, Conn./Southington) both earned All-New England honors for their performances in the 5000-meter run. Leonard finished sixth overall in 14:52.72, while Wilcox took eighth in 14:59.93.

Stonehill expects to be well represented at the 2014 NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships in Winston-Salem, N.C., in two weeks when entries are announced this week. The Championships will be held at JDL Fast Track March 14-15.

For the latest on Stonehill Athletics, follow the Skyhawks via social media on Twitter and Facebook. Fans can also download the Stonehill Skyhawks mobile app on iTunes and the Android Market.