ITC traveled to Jacksonville, Illinois this past weekend for the Illinois College Dr. Jim Green Invitational. This meet marked the first large showing from Coach Tyler Splitt’s middle distance squad, and there were some very promising performances that will hopefully go a long way come April. There were a lot of other great performances other than the Mid D as well, so lets get into it.
There were many great personal records (PRs) and strong performances from the men’s squad. Mid D sophomores Sean McCarty and Brian Griffin (known as “#BGriff” on Twitter) started off their days/seasons with solid splits in the DMR (McCarty with 53s in the 400m leg, and Griffin with a 4:46 1600 leg). They both also went on to run good 800s as well. Freshman Jacob Tellez made up for his slightly disappointing start to the season at IWU, with a 2:06, which he was much more content with. The afore mentioned Tyler Splitt keeps getting faster, and ran a season’s best 800 in 1:59. Sophomore Mid D runner Will Reyes shocked the crowd and himself in the 800, when he ran 21 seconds faster than his seed time! Junior distance runner Alex Notton ran a solid mile coming through at 4:39.
The women had a very good day as well. Freshman Katie Escobar kicked off her season with a few different events, and had a highlight 800m race coming through with a time of 2:27. Mariela Marquez also had a club PR in the mile by 18s, in her season debut. The women may have found their new “A” sprint relay team in Lauren Jonen, Abby Ralph, Jess Ayers, and Becky Haight who ran a 4:15 4×4 and a new club record 1:49 in the 4×2! Abby Ralph also ended up re-breaking the 60m hurdle record for the third time with a time of 9.93 (the only woman to break 10 in the indoor 60m hurdles from the club). For her outstanding performances in the relays as well as the 60m hurdles, Abby Ralph got the ITC Official Interview this week!
And with that, ITC splits up next weekend with the team going to both GVSU and Taylor University, so stay tuned!
(P.S If you are interested in viewing the full race results as well as athlete profiles and records click Here)