SPRINGFIELD, Mass.— Senior Eric Bottern (Saint Paul, Minn.) and first-year Chris McDonough (North Andover, Mass.) captured individual titles and the Babson College men registered three school records on the way to a program-best third-place finish at the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) track & field championships Saturday afternoon at Springfield College's Blake Track.

The Beavers finished in third place with a program record 151 points, nearly double their previous high of 80 points which they scored last year, and just six shy of second place and one-half point ahead of fourth place WPI. MIT captured the team title with 234 points, while Springfield was runner-up with 157, followed by Babson (151), WPI (150.5), Coast Guard (63.5) and Wheaton (42).

Bottern captured the individual title in the shot put with a mark of 56-feet, 4.5-inches, more than two feet further than his runner-up mark from last season. He also placed second in the discus with a season-best mark of 135-feet, 8-inches, earning All-NEWMAC honors in two events on the day.

McDonough had an outstanding day in his first conference championship meet. He captured first place in the 100-meter dash finals with a time of 10.84 seconds, and he finished runner-up in the 200 meters in a time of 21.80 seconds, breaking his own school record in the process to earn his second All-NEWMAC recognition.

McDonough also anchored Babson's 4x100 meter relay team that finished in second place with a school record time of 41.52 seconds, taking the baton after senior Michael Agard (Marietta, Ga.), first-year Kainoa Ronquilio (Waipahu, Hawaii) and senior Demarre Johnson (Dallas, Texas). They eclipsed the previous program record of 42.45 seconds set in 2022 and finished just 0.27 seconds off the winning time by MIT. The time ranks 24th in Division III this season.

Senior Anthony Rodriguez (Prairie View, Ill.) finished runner-up in the 5,000 meters to earn his second All-NEWMAC recognition in as many days. His time of 14:44.56 was just 0.19 seconds behind winning David Reynolds of MIT (14:44.37) and three seconds off the NEWMAC record of 14:41.39 he set a year ago. Junior Julian Ivarra (Plano, Texas) turned in an impressive fourth place finish in a time of 15:14.93, 15 seconds better than his sixth-place time from last year.

Junior Will Dean (Belmont, Mass.) earn All-NEWMAC honors with a second-place finish in the decathlon, scoring 4.331 points. He had the best performance of the three competitors in Saturday's discus (81-feet, 10-inches) and pole vault (9-feet, 4.25-inches) and second-best in 110-meter hurdles (21.19), javelin (126-feet, 8-inches) and 1500 meters (5:36.12).

The Beavers had two strong finishers in the 400-meter hurdles, as first-year Stratton Seymour (Merrimac, Mass.) finished in third place with a program-record time of 57.45 seconds, and classmate Gabe Rosenberg (Silver Spring, Md.) placed seventh in a personal-best 1:01.69. Seymour bettered the previous Babson record time of 57.78 seconds set by Ethan Kohanik in 2019.

Babson's 4x400 meter relay team finished fourth as the quartet of Gerado Fernandez (St. Johnsbury, Vt.), sophomore Max Gregoire (Tyngsborough, Mass.), Seymouth and Ronquilio recorded a season-best time of 3:24.38.

Two Beaver first-years finished in the top six in the 400 meters, as Ronquilio was fourth in a time of 50.09 seconds and Fernandez finished sixth in a personal-best time of 50.23. The Green and White finished in fifth and seventh place in three events, as Johnson was fifth in a season-best time of 21.98 seconds and Ronquilio was seventh in 22.28 in the 200 meters; junior Harrison Prucher (Hopkinton, Mass.) took fifth in a season-best time of 15.53 and Rosenberg was seventh in 16.01 in the 110 meter hurdles; and sophomore Joseph Addotta (Ridgefield, Conn.) was fifth with a mark of 128-feet, 1-inch and first-year Coleman Hayes (New York, N.Y.) was seventh with a mark of 119-feet, 2-inches in the discus.

The Beavers also had two athletes score points in the triple jump as junior Jack Reynolds (Fairfield, Conn.) finished fourth with a season-best leap of 42-feet, 8-inches and first-year Jordan Wright (Haworth, N.J.) was seventh with a mark of 39-feet, 10-inches.

Babson earned points from four other athletes as first-year Almond Nickerson IV (Darien, Conn.) placed seventh in the 3000-meter steeplechase in a season-best time of 10:08.15; Agard finished eighth in the 100-meter dash in 11.10 seconds; Hayes was eighth in the shot put with a mark of 39-feet, 8.75-inches; and Reynolds was eighth in the high jump in a season-best 6-feet, 1.5-inches.
 
Babson will send its top performers to the Division III New England Championships next Friday and Saturday at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.