Eastern University Men's Track and Field is set to compete at the 2025 MAC Indoor Track and Field Championships. The two-day event will be hosted by Alvernia University at The Plex in Reading, Pa.
The men's Schedule on Friday includes field event finals for the Weight Throw, Pole Vault and Long Jump as well as the first four events in the Heptathlon. On the track, there will be finals for the Distance Medley Relay, the 4 x 200 Meter Relay, and the 5,00 Meter Run, as well as trials for the 60 Meter Dash, and 60 Meter Hurdles. The remainder of the schedule will start on Saturday at 10 AM with the Triple Jump.
League coaches picked the Eagles to finish 7th overall. This year's squad has good potential to score across all types of events and has depth to make a jump forward from last year's ninth place finish.
Based on times so far this year, the Eastern squad has three men in the top eight spots of a closely -packed field in the 60 Meter Dash. Ni'Male Greenwood comes in as the top seed and is the only MAC athlete to go under 6.9 seconds in the event this year. He ran a 6.88 on Alvernia's track and has been consistently under seven seconds. Jason Bateman and James Ugorji are fifth and eighth in the seeds.
The Eagles hope that top-end speed will enable them to score well in the 4x200 where they sit in second among MAC Teams.
Greenwood is seeded fifth in the 200.
The Eagles also have hopes to score with multiple athletes in the hurdles where they have five qualifiers. Ian Hopkins enters with the third-best time, and Daniel Franklin is seventh. Though he qualified for the event, Donovan Skinner will not be running the open hurdles, because he will be running them as part of the Heptathlon. Skinner is the fifth seed in that event.
Kojo Cunningham and Cameron Baker will both run in the 400 Meter Dash. While neither has a favorable lane in the sections for time event, Alvernia's track has fairly wide turns, and Baker is in a section with two sub-50 second runners who could help the first year to reach a PR in the event.
Robert Walton will run in the fast section of the 800. He is seeded seventh in the event, but he took second in the event last February and has the fastest indoor PR in the field. Ryle Mellinger also qualified for the event and would have joined Walton in the fast heat, but the junior is going to run in the Mile. He is seeded fourth in that event and is looking to build on his PR which he set on Feb. 15.
Mellinger and Walton will be part of Eastern's Distance Medley and 4 x 800 Meter teams.
In the field, the Eagles have multiple qualifiers in several events. Hopkins, Keyon Jones, and Lawrence Day are all qualified in a packed field for the High Jump. Elijah McCullough and Jeric Lewis will both compete in the Triple Jump.
First year throwers Derrick Swain and Christian Marrero will each likely need to PR to get on the podium in the Shot Put, but they are in the event. Eastern has never scored a point inside in a throwing event, and Swain and Marrero are just the second and third individuals to throw shot at a MAC Championship for Eastern. Four Eastern throwers will compete in the Weight Throw. Foday Koroma and Nick Bensavage have each broken the program record with PR's this year, and will look to add to that number as they compete against a deep field in that event.
Fans can follow the Championship online.
The tournament page will update links and results throughout the event.
Here is the link to LIVE RESULTS
Alvernia is providing two streams for the Championship. Here is a link to the schedule.
Stream 1
Steram 2
