HAMILTON, N.Y. - Senior Mark Shapiro had a win and a second place finish, while Jake Cooper also picked up a victory for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) men's track & field team, which placed third at the Class of '21 Invitational at Colgate University. As a team the Engineers finished third with 108 points, trailing the host Raiders and Hamilton College.

Shapiro earned 18 points with his efforts. He captured the shot put with a throw of 14.20 meters and was second in the weight throw at 17.39 meters. Rensselaer had the top three finishers - and six of the top eight in the shot put with Ben Zawislak in second (12.92) and Marco Oliveri in third (12.89). The weight throw featured nine Engineers in the top 12.

Cooper, a sophomore, won the 15-competitor 3000 meters with a time of 9:09.37, which was more than five second in front of the runner-up, a senior from Colgate who crossed in 9:14.60.

RPI had two of the top three finishers in the 60 Hurdles with freshman Kai Takayma placing second (9.14) behind a senior from Colgate (8.04) and Tim Wise coming in third (9.21).

The top of the long jump had three Engineers with Jared Braun finishing as runner-up (6.20), Desmond Lambe coming in third (6.11) and Kemyero King placing fourth (6.09). Ricky Patterson of Herkimer County Community College won with a leap of 6.27 meters.

And in the triple jump, Orry Nihangame was third with an effort of 12.55 meters.

Rensselaer also had student-athletes compete in the David Hemery Valentine Invitational, a non-team scoring, multi-divisional competition at the Boston University Track & Tennis Center. Among the highlights based on place of finish were 10th place for Owen Szabo in the 5000 meter run with a time of 15:02.30 and 13th in the 3000 by Matt Lecky (8:37.82).

The 4x400 relay team of Leighton James, Luke Lyons, Ben Ertel and Neil Casimir boasted an 11th place finish with a time of 3:20.02, which was just .03 from the school record. Individually, Casimir set the school record in the 400 with a time of 48.75.

In the mile, Noah Falasco broke the Rensselaer record - and registered the fastest time in Division III to date - with a 4:05.10. And in the 5000 meters, Henry Jaques ran the fourth fastest time in the nation (14:23.84) and Joe Domanico the 12th (14:32.01).

The team is now idle until it competes in the Liberty League Championship on February 28-29 in Rochester (RIT).