The Oles finished a distant second at the meet, which was held at Concordia in Moorhead, Minn.

The runaway victory for the Tommies marked their 21st consecutive indoor title, breaking the MIAC record for most consecutive conference championships in any sport.

The previous record belonged to the St. Olaf men’s swimming and diving team, which finished on top of the MIAC every year from 1980 to 1999.

Even though they could not stop the Tommie juggernaut, the Oles still turned in a number of outstanding performances: Tom Cruse ’07 led the Ole charge with victories in two events, the 600 yard dash and the 800 meter run. Cruse’s time of 1:12.55 in the 600 yard dash was both a MIAC and an Olson Forum track record, breaking the old mark by over a second.

For his efforts, Cruse was named MIAC Outstanding Track Athlete of the Meet.

St. Olaf’s much-heralded long distance duo of Malcolm Richards ’05 and Kelly Fulton ’05 ended their collegiate indoor track careers with a bang Saturday. Richards finished second in the 3000 meter run with a time of 8:44.19, actually bettering the old track record, only to be clipped by rival Dan Bucy of Carleton by under two seconds. The Ole stalwart also came in fourth in the 5000 meter run.

Fulton was impressive as well, finishing fifth in the 3000 (8:48.29) and third in the 5000 (15:03.61).

Both St. Olaf relays suffered two narrow defeats at the hands of the Tommies. The 800 meter relay of Trey Williams ’06, Aaron Schloer ‘07, Latravis Henry ’07 and Joe May ‘06 came in less than two seconds behind St. Thomas with a time of 1:32.47, while the 4x400 relay of Schloer, Horace Gant ’08, Nathan Campbell ’05 and Cruse finished only three seconds behind in 3:24.27.

In the field events, Jason Roberts ’07 jumped 21 feet, 10 1/4 inches in the long jump to place third. NCAA National Provisional qualifier Peter Cathcart ’06 also snagged a couple third place finishes of his own in both the shot put and weight throw.

Evan Sundquist ’05 took second in the heptalaton, held earlier in the week, with 4,662 points.

Overall, St. Olaf finished the weekend with 113 team points, narrowly topping the 104 points put up by St. John’s but a staggering 78 behind the Tommies.

Although the conference season may be over, a number of Oles have provisionally qualified for the NCAA National Championships, which takes place March 11-12.

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