Virginia Tech\'s track & field athletes Spyridon Jullien and Jacobus Smit won ACC individual titles on the first day of the 2005 Atlantic Coast Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships, which are being held at the Mike Long Track on the campus of Florida State this weekend. Other Hokies set personal and school records scoring points for Tech. Jullien (Jr., Athens, Greece) won the ACC men\'s hammer throw title with a mark of 233\'7\" (71.21m). His throw broke the ACC\'s four-year meet record by more than 25 feet and set Florida State\'s Mike Long Track record. Jullien, a two-time All-American and two-time BIG EAST champion specifically in the hammer throw, still remains the No. 1 hammer throw athlete in the NCAA to date. Smit (Jr., Pretoria, South Africa), currently the No. 2 men\'s javelin thrower in the nation, became the ACC champion in the event with a mark of 236\'5\" (72.06m), which was 23 feet farther than the second place finisher. Smit, a 2004 all-region selection and a two-time NCAA qualifier in the event, won his first conference championship.
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The men and women teams will travel to Tallahassee this weekend to compete in the ACC Outdoor Championships. The Cavaliers feature four men who have qualified for regionals and five women who have also qualified for the meet. Billie Jo Grant is the only Virginia athlete who has qualified in two events (discus and shot put) while of the nine, Kellen Blassingame and David Sullivan have both set school records in their respective events.
Virginia javelin thrower Inge Jorgensen won her fourth ACC title in the javelin tonight (April 21), leading the Cavaliers to the opening-day lead in the ACC Outdoor Track & Field Championships which are being held in Tallahassee, Fla. Jorgensen and teammate Annie Bobiak went 1-2 in the event, and Cheryl Carr took seventh in the 10K, giving the Cavaliers 20 points, putting them four ahead of UNC. The Virginia men are in sixth with 13 points.
Virginia\'s Alex Tatu posted the top qualifying time in the 1500 and also was one of the top qualifiers in the 800 as the Cavalier track and field teams continued action on Friday (April 22) at the ACC Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Tallahassee. Tatu finished behind teammate and top qualifier McGavock Dunbar in the 800 as the men had three athletes qualify for the final as Virginia was the only school to have more than one student-athlete in the top eight of the preliminaries. Virginia\'s steeplechasers also finished 3-4 as Soeren Lindner took the bronze and Walt Kingsbery took fourth as the Cavaliers were the only school to place two athletes in the top four of the event.
Virginia Tech\'s men\'s team finished in sixth place with 60 points while the Hokie women took ninth place with 48.5 points at the 2005 Atlantic Coast Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships, which was held at the Mike Long Track on the campus of Florida State all weekend.
The Virginia men\'s cross country team was a huge treat on Halloween as they captured the ACC Cross Country Championships, their first conference title since 1984, with a 4-5-6-7-8 finish that put them 8 points over second place Florida State. Racing the 8K race at The Greenway in Tallahassee, Fla., the men came into the meet ranked 18th nationally and were the highest ranked team in the conference. Jan Foerster, Andrew Dumm, Soeren Lindner, Ryan Foster, Andy Biladeau, and Alex Tatu all earned All-Conference honors by virtue of their finish. The top five runners for the Cavaliers crossed the finish line in a ten-second span, and all eight runners finished within a minute of each other.