With one jump to go in the men’s triple jump finals, Joseph Oduro ’26 watched as Yale’s Brian Di Bassinga stole the lead. For three rounds, Oduro’s 15.24-meter jump topped the rankings until Bassinga managed to outperform him by .01 meters on his final jump.
Now in second place, with the last triple jump of the Ivy League Indoor Heptagonal Championships, the pressure of an entire season’s worth of work rested on Oduro’s shoulders.
“On my last jump, I was in second place, back against the wall and all eyes on me,” Oduro wrote in a message to The Herald. “My teammates, coaches and family cheered and (leant) me their energy.”
With one last chance to claim gold, Oduro took to the runway and landed as the gold medalist for the event. Leaping 15.58 meters, Oduro blew past Bassinga’s mark, winning the event and setting a personal record in the process.
“The fuel from the fans, my teammates and even the faces of my competitors — it all pushes you to be better,” Oduro wrote. “That’s what competition is about. I love it, and it lights the fire in me every time. I’m so grateful for the opportunity and the people who helped me get here.”
Despite stand-out performances, the Bears failed to improve on last year’s outcome. At the 2024 championships, the women’s team finished in fourth place with 84 cumulative points while the men took fifth, buoyed by a 45-point effort.
But, this year, both teams dropped in their respective standings — the women’s team finished in seventh place with 32 points while the men finished last. Princeton dominated the competition, leading the men’s team with 189.5 points and the women’s team with 168 points.
During the two-day championship, individual athletes can earn points for their team by finishing in the top six of any given event. Gold medals earn ten points, silver medals earn eight points and bronze are worth six. Athletes in fourth place are awarded four points, fifth place two points and sixth-place finishers are awarded one point.
“We had many PRs and great performances, but I do feel that as a team we want more,” Chidinma Agbasi ’25, who has been a bright light for the women’s team all season, wrote in a message to The Herald. “We finished 4th last year as women and this year we finished 7th. We are … very determined to improve through outdoor and get back to where we once were.”
On Saturday, Agbasi set the foundation for the Bears. Delivering the best performance of her career, Agbasi launched a 19.77-meter long weight throw. Agbasi extended the University record by 0.5 meters — a record she herself set at the Yale Invitational three weeks ago — and clinched the bronze in the event.
“I was very very grateful to be on the podium with my teammate,” Agbasi wrote, referencing Michelyn Appiah ’27, who finished in fourth place with an 18.81-meter throw. Appiah, who set a personal best as well, now ranks second in program history, trailing behind Agbasi.
Throughout the first day of competition, four other athletes secured points for Brown. Frank Monahan-Morang ’26 won a silver medal in the men’s long jump with a career-best 7.38-meter leap. He was awarded Second Team All-Ivy honors for his efforts in the long jump.
Delaney Seligmann ’25 took home the bronze in the women’s pentathlon with 3,850 points. Along the way, she won the pentathlon long jump with a mark of 6.04 meters.
In the men’s weight throw, Keith Daigneau ’27 set a new personal record of 19.97 meters which earned him fifth place in the event. Capping the day off, Jada Joseph ’25 earned one point with a sixth-place finish of 6.09 meters in the women’s long jump.
By the end of day one, the women’s team ranked third with 17 points while the men held on to sixth place. On Sunday, despite Bruno’s best efforts, the other Ivy teams began to pull away.
Joseph attempted to level the playing field. Competing in the women’s triple jump, she delivered an emphatic 12.77-meter performance and won the bronze medal.
Gabriel Thai ’27 set a new personal record in the men’s heptathlon. Totalling 4,722 points, he finished in fifth place. While competing in the seven-competition event, Thai finished second in the pole vault and third in the 1,000-meter race, setting personal records in both events.
Though a number of other athletes were able to clinch top-five finishes, ultimately, Bruno’s efforts could not keep pace with talented Princeton and Harvard rosters. Despite Saturday’s rankings — with the women ranking at the top, and the men standing in the middle of the pack — the women had fallen to seventh place while the men stood in eighth by the time the competition concluded.
The women’s track team plan to compete in the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships while the men’s team will compete in the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America Championships on March 9. This weekend will mark the end of the indoor season as the track team pivots to outdoors.
Lydell Dyer is a sports editor for The Herald. A junior hailing from Bonn, Germany, Lydell is studying nonfiction English and political science, and if he's not off "making words sound pretty," you can find him lifting heavy circles at the Nelson.
