Cincy's Yoder steals decathlon in 1,500

Going into the final event of the Penn Relays College Men's Decathlon yesterday, Chris Boyles had a 47-point lead. The Messiah College (Pa.) junior then ran a time that was 13 seconds faster than he had ever run in the 1,500 meters -- and lost his lead. Cincinnati's Mike Yoder ran 4:36.05 -- 7.8 seconds faster than Boyles -- to sneak away with a six-point victory in the two-day, 10-event competition, 6,765-6,759. "Yeah, I lost, but I'm psyched that I ran a 4:43," Boyles said. "I'm proud I ended on that instead of ending on a 4:57 and losing by six points." Yoder needed to beat Boyles by about seven seconds to claim the first-place gold watch. Had Boyles run one second faster, Yoder would have had to settle for second place. "I didn't want to worry about where [Boyles] was at," Yoder said. "I tried to run the best race that I could and hopefully he'd have to try to hang with me. "It ended up working." Yoder's total, was, however, the lowest winning score ever in the Penn Relays decathlon -- by far. Every previous first-place finisher had scored at least 7,000 points. But that didn't diminish the accomplishment for Yoder. "To win this and get into the books is something," Yoder said. "Scores weren't the best this year, but the competition is still there." Yoder's teammate, Chris Wineberg, finished third with 6,748 points. Only 17 points separated Wineberg and Yoder. Josh Coleman was the lone Penn athlete to compete. The senior finished 11th with 6,235 points. The decathlon wasn't the only Penn Relays event that took place yesterday. Puerto Rico's Damaris Diana won the college women's heptathlon with 4,916 points. Diana only had a four-point lead over Trinity's Amanda Rival after Day 1, but by the end of Day 2 she had stretched that lead to 258 points. Rival ended up in second, 56 points ahead of third place Se'verine Tanic from Morgan State. Like it was in the decathlon, the winning heptathlon score was unusually low. The last time a Relays heptathlete emerged victorious with so few points was in 1988, when Penn's Frances Childs won with a score of 4,886.

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