GRINNELL, IOWA - Senior tri-captain Mitchell Black of the Tufts men's track & field team won his third consecutive 800 meters national championship on Saturday at the 2016 NCAA Division III Indoor Championships hosted by Grinnell College.
Black won the race with a 1:52.48 time for a 1.19-second margin of victory over Washington University's Deko Ricketts (1:53.661). The Jumbo All-American repeated as NCAA Indoor 800 champ, including last year's 1:51.94 victory, and also added it to his 2015 NCAA Outdoor 800 crown (1:52.57).
He made it look easy today. Hovering in the third through fifth spots through 600 meters, Black made his move during the bell lap and pulled away from the pack. Last year when Black won the NCAA Indoor title, he celebrated his first national championship with clenched fists and a loud yell while crossing the finish line. Today there was no dramatic reaction as the undisputed NCAA Division III 800 king earned the third title and ninth All-American honor of his career.
"I approached it just as I have with Nationals races in the past," Black said on Sunday. "Time doesn't matter. It's all about where you are in the race in the last 300. I was confident in my ability to kick, so I hung back until about 250 to go, at which point I made a hard move to the front and pushed with everything I had. None of the front runners were able to cover the move, which was the hope going in to the race. It played out similarly to last year's Indoor final."
Including his three 800 titles, Black was third in the 800 indoors as a sophomore in 2014 and was the national runner-up in the outdoor 800 that season. He was eighth outdoors as a freshman. Black also has three relay All-American honors indoors.
Black entered the 2016 meet as the top seed in the 800 with a 1:50.89 qualifying mark. In the preliminaries on Friday, he made the final by finishing second in his heat (1:55.10).
"I knew if I ran a smart prelim that I could get to the final without having to run a blistering race, so the coaches talked a lot about positioning going into the race," Black said. "I just wanted to stay out of trouble and move up with a lap to go to put myself in position to go through to the final. It was a bit more physical than we anticipated, but I was able to clear the scrum and grab the second auto-spot."
Earlier in the week Black was announced as the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association New England Track Athlete of the Year for the second straight indoor season.
Ironically, Tufts also saw misfortune in today's NCAA men's 800 as senior Veer Bhalla fell during the race and finished eighth (2:04.10). He was running fifth with approximately 200 meters to go, in a good position to move up, when the runner behind him caught his legs and he went to the ground. Bhalla was the sixth seed entering the 800 with a 1:52.32 time. However, he does earn an All-American accolade for today's result. It is the second of his career, including an eighth in the 2014 NCAA Indoor 800.
With the 11 points scored by Black and Bhalla in the 800, Tufts was 21st in team scoring.
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