Lions are the kings of the jungles and in the US Coaches Series track meet at the Multi-Sports Complex Saturday, the Penn State men's track and field team was the king of the track.

The Lions finished in first place overall in the men's competition with 226.50 points, beating second place Seton Hall by 130 points. Third place went to Cornell, which had 91.5 points.

"The older guys went out and did the usual," Nittany Lions coach Harry Groves said. "We got good results out of the freshmen like Drummond and depth was the siding factor in this event."

NCAA All-American captain Brian Derby was also pleased with the results.

"We had a pretty rough day individually," Derby said, "but as a team we came together with pretty good performances even though our team was banged up."

In the competition finals, the team had six first place finishes, nine second place finishes and four third place finishes.

The meet began a half-hour earlier than the scheduled time, and it seemed from that the beginning the Lions had been waiting to get started for a long time.

"Everyone was anxious to get started," Groves said. "Some were too enthusiastic and because of this got nicked up."

There were some great performances from the team such as Lions football player Eddie Drummond finished in second place in the finals of the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.60 seconds, and thereby qualifying for the NCAA Championships.

The men's pole vault was also another thrilling event with sophomore Kevin Dare just being squeezed out to second place with a pole vault of five meters.

"I feel great physically but mentally today, I was feeling timid," the sophomore said.

"It was a good result for early in the season. It's a transitional phase and you just have to move up from there."

When asked about his goals for this season, Dare said he wanted to be an All-American and finish in the top 10 in the nation. Other members of the team also had the same determination with Derby, saying that the team was really concentrated because they wanted to build on what they did last year.

Other notable individual performances in the track events came from Maraire Munya in the 60-meter dash, NCAA All-Americans Guy Rose and Brian Derby in the 60-meter high hurdles.

Both Maraire and Rose could both qualify for their events in the NCAA Championships with the times they got at the meet.

Team captain Dorian Lowe finished first in his event, the men's weight throw of 35-pounds. Senior Ryan Olkowski finished first in the high jump and long jump, while junior Chavous Nichols also came first in the triple jump.

The freshmen also had a good showing with strong performances in the distances of 400 meters and above.

"We have been excited at this year because of the freshmen coming in," Derby said, "and we were pleased with some of their performances."

And when asked if he felt this year's team was better than last year, he said, "I really do because of the freshmen we have in here."