Making Big Impressions

ED KANIA, Ken Jansson, and Sean O'Keefe like to throw their weight around. Early in March, the Dartmouth trio swept the top three places in the 35- pound weight toss at the IC4A indoor track championships at Princeton. "It's hard to believe three guys sweeping an event in the IC4As," said assistant track coach Carl Wallin. "Some people said it had never been done before."

Kania, a six-foot five-inch, 260-pounder, broke the IC4A record with a throw of 70 feet 2¼ inches. (A week earlier, he won the National AAU championship with a toss of 71 feet 5 inches, his best effort of the year.) Jansson threw the weight 68 feet 4½ inches and O'Keefe did 64 feet 6¾ inches to finish second and third. Jansson broke the record by a foot but held the mark for only four minutes until Kania's throw. O'Keefe's toss would have won the meet last year.

One week later, the trio traveled to Detroit for the NCAA championships. Kania's throw of 71 feet 2½ inches was just three inches short of the winning toss by Scott Neilson of Washington. Jansson's throw of 68 feet 2½ inches was good for third place, and O'Keefe finished eighth.

Kania, a senior, never threw the weight in high school, where he was a triple jumper and a discus thrower. When he came to Dartmouth, he weighed 195 pounds, 65 pounds less than he does now. "I eat four meals a day to keep my weight up, and I felt strong out there because of it," he said after the IC4A meet, which is open to all schools on the East Coast. "I dropped to 220 over the summer. I was working 100 hours a week at a resort, and really paid for it. I've been packing the weight on intentionally since then." Kania lifts weights for two hours four times a week, throws the weight for an hour three times a week, and runs for conditioning.

Jansson, a 250-pound senior, was on the football team and is a shotputter. His toss at the Heptagonal championships at Hanover placed him on the all-Ivy team for that event. O'Keefe, a 230-pounder, is a junior. The three weight men and their coach were featured on the cover of a recent issue of Coach and Athlete. "I'd never heard of the magazine before, but I'll take it," said Wallin with a laugh.