HENRIETTA, NY – The University of Rochester men's track & field team secured a pair of Liberty League titles and sits in third place following the opening day of competition on Friday at the 2025-26 Liberty League Indoor Track & Field Championships, hosted by RIT inside the Gordon Field House.
 
Ethan Beer notched Rochester's first title of the day, breaking the program record in the shot put for the third-consecutive week. The junior broke his own record with his fourth throw, and then smashed the record again with his final toss, topping the podium with a 15.86m toss, an All-Atlantic Region Track & Field Championships (AARTFC) qualifier, and the 49th-ranked toss on the NCAA Division III Indoor Qualifying List.
 
Rochester added another individual title later on in the long jump, as Aadit Jain broke 7.00m for the first time in his career, leading five Yellowjackets in the top eight and topping the field with a 7.09m leap. Jain's leap was an AARTFC qualifier, a new personal best and ranks 40th on the indoor qualifying list.
 
Reward Mulauzi, Ashton Tokarski, Austin Lansey and Emmett Hansen all joined Jain in the top eight of the long jump, with both Mulauzi and Tokarski also notching PRs. Mulauzi came in fourth with a 6.72m jump, Tokarski took fifth with a 6.70m leap, Lansey's 6.56m jump was good for sixth and Hansen finished seventh with a 6.51m leap, with the five combining to score 24 points for URochester.
 
Through the opening day of competition, the Yellowjackets sit in third place with 53 points, with RPI atop the eight-team field with 91 points and host RIT in second with 58 points. St. Lawrence (28 points) and Ithaca (27 points) round out the top five teams heading into the second and final day of competition.
 
Two more 'Jackets scored for UR in the field events, with Brant Nicholls and Cody Reeth taking third and fourth, respectively, in the pole vault. Both Nicholls and Reeth achieved a height of 4.66m, a regional qualifier and a new personal-best mark for Reeth.
 
On the track, Jacob Bernd got Rochester's day started with the mile, taking eighth with a time of 4:22.96. URochester then placed five runners into the 60-meter and 60-meter hurdle finals, led by a pair of third-place finishes in the prelims.
 
Elijah VanHoover won his heat and took third overall in the 60-meter hurdle prelims, clocking in at 8.47 seconds, a new PR and an AARTFC qualifier, while Owen Alexander came in seventh with a time of 8.570 seconds to also qualify.
 
In the 60 meters, Barack Abdallah also came in third and won his heat with an AARTFC-qualifying time of 6.993 seconds, while Jain and William Stiska will join Abdallah in Saturday's final. Jain came in fifth, crossing the finish line in 7.01 seconds, a new personal-best time and an AARTFC qualifier, while Stiska also set a PR with his 7.057-second time.
 
Evan Bryant led Rochester in the 400 meters, scoring a point with his eighth-place result and 50.91-second time, while Sam Cohen paced the 'Jackets in the 5,000 meters with a 10th-place finish and time of 15:39.62.
 
In the heptathlon, Tokarski holds the top spot through the first four events of the seven-event competition, with four more Yellowjackets in the top 10. Tokarski leads the way with 2,701 points, 26 ahead of RPI's Leo Lomangino in second place. The junior won both the heptathlon long jump (6.72m) and high jump (1.85m), setting new personal-best marks in both, and added another PR and third-place finish in the 60 meters (7.26s) and a fifth-place result in the shot put (10.09m).
 
Hansen sits in third place with 2,658 points, 43 points shy of Tokarski in first. The sophomore took second in both the 60 meters (7.24s) and long jump (6.54m), third in the high jump (1.82m) and fourth in the shot put (10.37m), setting new personal-best marks in both the 60 meters and high jump.
 
Next up for Rochester in the heptathlon is Jack Maness with 2,376 points in sixth place. The senior finished in the top eight of all four events on the first day of competition, taking sixth in both the shot put (9.97m) and high jump (1.73), with a new personal-best throw in the shot put and an indoor PR in the long jump (7th, 6.14m).
 
Quillan Shimp is in seventh with 2,291 points, with his best finish coming in the long jump, a 6.20m jump that set a new PR. Shimp scored a sixth-place finish in the long jump and added seventh and eighth-place results in the shot put (9.71m) and high jump (1.64m), respectively.
 
Nicholls rounded out Rochester's five heptathletes in the 12-man field, sitting in 10th with 2,105 points. Nicholls earned his best finish of the day in the high jump (7th, 1.67m) and added another top-10 finish in the long jump (9th, 5.85m).
 
URochester's distance medley relay of Austin Skeete, Trevor Whitney, Owen Bernstein and Liam Sakakeeny wrapped up the Yellowjackets' first day on the track, combining for a time of 10:21.61, good for third place, an AARTFC qualifier and the 26th-best DMR time in Division III so far this season.
 
The Yellowjackets will be back in action for day two of the 2025-26 Liberty League Indoor Track & Field Championships on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 11:00 a.m. in Henrietta, NY.