PITTSFORD, NY – A fabulous first day at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships saw the University of Rochester men's track and field team earn one All-America award and qualify for the finals in another event.
 
All five of the Yellowjacket national qualifiers competed during Thursday's opening day at St. John Fisher University's Polisseni Track and Field Complex.
 
Sophomore Cole Goodman got things started for the Yellowjackets with an All-America finish in the long jump, placing third in the field of 22 jumpers.
 
Goodman was the winner in flight one during the opening jumps, posting his finishing mark on jump two. In the first and third attempt in the flight, Goodman fouled, but still held the early lead.
 
The sophomore, who entered the meet as the 13th-seed, had to wait and see if his distance was good enough to qualify for the finals where he would potentially get an additional three jumps.
 
Not only did Goodman qualify for the finals, but his distance held up well as he remained in the top-3 after all the competitors jumped three times.
 
In the finals, only one of the top-9 jumpers improved on their mark from the flights, and none passed Goodman as the sophomore remained in third, securing his second All-America award of his career.
 
Senior Scott Sikorski had a strong effort in the preliminary heats of the 1500 meters, qualifying for the event finals on Saturday with a time of 3:47.51.
 

Sikorski paced the race, holding the lead throughout much of his heat and was only passed in the last 50 meters by the top seeded runner in the event. After the second heat, Sikorski's time finished the preliminaries third in the field.
 
Fellow senior Gabe Lundy participated in the other preliminary race of the day featuring a Yellowjacket runner. Lundy entered the event seeded 22nd, but improved on that place by ten spots, finishing the prelims in 12th place, crossing the finish in 53.36 seconds.
 
The run matched Lundy's third best time of his stellar four-year career at Rochester.
 
Also, competing on day one were senior Alex Opsahl and junior Aeden Angelone in the decathlon. Following the opening five events which took place on Thursday, Opsahl is currently in tenth place with 3,439 points and Angelone ranks 13th with 3,409 points.
 
Angelone started out the day strong, posting personal-best marks of 11.49 seconds in the 100 meters and 6.80 meters in the long jump. Those events scored him 755 and 767 points, respectively, with the long jump mark ranking fifth in the field.
 
Opsahl showed out in the shot put and high jump, ranking third among the 22 decathletes in each event to move up in the standings. He tossed the shot 12.29 meters to score 624 points and added a 1.90 meter clearance in the high jump, scoring 714 points.
 
The final event of the day featured another personal-best, this time with Opsahl running the 400 meters in 51.80 seconds, using that time to score a day one best 734 points. Additionally, the senior ran 11.75 seconds in the 100 meters and jumped a season-best 6.36 meters in the long jump.
 
Angelone ended the 400 meters with a 52.50 second time to score over 700 points for the third time on the day. His other event results featured an 11.46 meter toss in the shot put and a 1.78 meter height in the high jump.
 
Day two action gets underway with the decathlon 110 meter hurdles starting at 10 am. The remaining four events after that include the discus, pole vault, javelin and 1500 meters.
 
Looking ahead to Saturday, Goodman competes in the triple jump starting at 1 pm, while Sikorski's final in the 1500 meters is slated to begin at 1:25 pm.