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May 5, 2007

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Navy men's track & field junior Paul Harris (Woodbury, Minn.) won two events, assisted on another event title and broke a league record on Saturday to lead the Midshipmen to a third-place finish at the Patriot League Championship at Lehigh's Goodman Outdoor Track & Field Complex.

The Midshipmen won seven events on Saturday to rack up 141 points over the two-day championship, only 23 points behind defending league-champion Army's 164 points and three points off Bucknell's 144-point tally.

Harris, selected this year's Patriot League Track Athlete of the Meet, highlighted a cast of three Navy runners that scored points in the 400-meter dash, as he broke the league championship record with a blistering time of 46.77 seconds. Junior William Ricks (Sussex, Va.) followed in third with an IC4A time of 48.06 seconds and senior Cameron Lindsay (Kernersville, N.C.) placed fifth with a 48.97-second showing. Harris also won the 200-meter dash with a season-best time of 21.53 seconds, while Ricks notched a point with his 22.13-second, sixth-place showing.

Ricks, Lindsay, junior Craig Meekins (Baldwin, N.Y.) and Harris combined for a first-place time of 3:09.71 in the 4x400-meter relay. The clocking qualified them for the NCAA regional championship and was the third-fastest time in school history.

The Midshipmen registered the top-two marks in a pair of field events on Saturday. Senior Stephen White (Marietta, Ga.) won the high jump for the second-consecutive year, clearing a NCAA regional-qualifying mark of 2.10 meters. Classmate Cole Herron (Sanger, Calif.) surpassed the 2.07-meter bar, a season-best clearance, in finishing second in the event.

In the discus throw, junior Andre Barber (Carrollton, Texas) out-distanced the field with a season-best toss of 49.79 meters. Fellow junior Darryl Hunter (Des Moines, Iowa) also uncorked a season-best throw on Saturday, placing second with a mark of 49.56 meters. Hunter also won the shot put with a distance of 16.93 meters during the day.

Navy's other event victory came in the 110-meter hurdles, where junior Ron Belany (Haiku, Hawai'i) crossed the finish line first with a career-best time of 14.66 seconds.

The Midshipmen received multiple scoring contributions in two addition events on Saturday. Meekins recorded a NCAA regional-qualifying time of 1:49.59 in the 800-meter run to finish second, which also ranks as the fifth-quickest effort in school history. Burke completed the race in 1:52.51 to earn sixth-place points, narrowly missing the IC4A standard by 0.01-second.

Senior Michael Niemi (Duluth, Minn.) placed third in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 9:11.13, followed by junior John Olsen's (Staten Island, N.Y.) 9:14.51 showing to come in fourth.

Competing for the first time during the outdoor season, junior Dante Marshall (Hermitage, Pa.) landed fourth in the triple jump with an IC4A-distance of 14.56 meters. Junior Ben Kozy (Houston, Texas) finished fifth in th 1,500-meter run with a time of 3:51.57 and sophomore Joe Mills (Bay Shore, N.Y.) crossed the finish line in 54.12 seconds during the 400-meter hurdles to also tally fifth-place points.

The Midshipmen will return to action next weekend when they travel up to Princeton, N.J., for the IC4A Championship.