The men’s track and field team spent its spring break in Athens, Ga. with a week of intense training ending with a two-day competition at the Georgia Relays.

“We had real good weather between 65 and 80 degrees the whole week,” head coach Tom Akers said. “We got some solid training in and a couple days of competition. All in all, it was a successful trip.”

Seven teams competed in the Georgia Relays on the men’s side as Eastern faced tough competition from Savannah, host Georgia and others including Eastern Tennessee State and Western Kentucky.

Eastern finished first in three different relay events at the invite. The 4×800-meter relay team finished first with a time of 7:56.79, 16 seconds ahead of the second-place team. The relay consisted of Kevin Atkins, Spencer Smith, Kevin Christian and Steve Cross.

The invite also had two different sprint medleys, as Eastern took first place in both the 800-meter sprint relay and the 1600-meter relay. The 800-meter medley team was led by James Benson racing the first 100-meter leg while teammate Raushawn Render ran the second 100-meter leg. Toby Atawo ran the 200-meter portion of the race while Jermaine Jones capped off the winning relay in the 400-meter for a final time of 1:29.47.

The 1600-meter medley finished in 3:26.45 with Benson and Atawo running the 200-meter legs, Christian racing in the 400-meter and Cross ending the relay with the 800-meter leg.

“Those were the only events we won, but there were other real solid performances,” Akers said.

In the 100-meter dash, Atawo finished third in 10.63 while teammates Benson and Render finished seventh and eighth respectively.

Josh Vance finished second in the 10,000-meter run with a time of 31:47 while teammates Adam Mariott and Jeff Jonaitis finished fourth and fifth respectively.

Jones also raced in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles, opening the event for the first time in the outdoor season with a second-place finish in 52.49.

“That was his first time out there, and that was a real solid opening time,” Akers said.

Nick Scafiezzo also raced in the 400-meter hurdles, finishing fifth with a time of 56.25.

Eastern also had its first competition in the steeplechase where Eric Grubermann and John Sipple finished second (9:39.86) and fourth (10:01) respectively.

Thrower Ron White sprained his ankle Wednesday while working out and was on crutches until Saturday. But he finished second in the javelin throw with a distance of 217-39 inches. John Bork finished fourth in the javelin with a distance of 189-9 inches.

Freshman Josh Wakey finished fourth in the pole vault with a height of 14-7 3/4 inches.

“All in all, we had a really good week,” Akers said. “We had one real solid day of training and we competed well.”