This past weekend we got to see a lot of our team in their debut outdoor meets! The team traveled to the St. Louis area where we saw a couple of 5000m races at the WashU Invite on Friday, and the rest of the team competed on Saturday at the John Creer Invite at Lindenwood University. Let’s take a look at how they did.
First, on Friday night, a small group of distance folks made the trek out to St. Louis to all run in the 5000m. We got to see a couple of really solid PRs which is always awesome. Leading the group was Big Red, head coach Jared Ripoli, who had a big PR running over a minute faster than his previous best coming in at a slick 15:21. Following Jared, William ‘Wiam’ Wolf and David Choi each had PRs of their own coming in at 15:27 and 15:31, respectively. Leonel Rodriguez made his 5000m debut this weekend, running a 16:21. Rounding out the WashU CrU was the lone girl Anneliese Schulz who came in at 18:51.
The action continued on Saturday just 20 miles away (as the crow flies) at Lindenwood University. To begin the day, the men’s 4x100m dominated their heat and came away 3rd overall in the meet with a very impressive 43.28. Becky Haight continued to run fast, picking up right where she left off in indoor with a 60.43 in the 400m and a 26.26 in the 200m. Lauren Grant ran her first ever open 400m and significantly improved over her split times with a time of 65.38. After suffering a hamstring injury the week of Club Relays, Alex Bienduga made quite the return with a 400m of 51.39 and a 200m of 23.67. Joining him in the 200m, Mateusz Lopez ran a 23.51, Kevin Sager ran a 23.80, and Thomas Harris ran a 24.34. Michael Jang ran his first ever 400m hurdles race and debuted in a blazing fashion nearly breaking 60 with a 60.13! A bunch of excellent work on the sprints side and you should look out for some big performances this weekend!
In the longer events, we saw a lot of stellar performances. First, in the 1500m, Keith Lee ran the event for the first time and was just 55 hundredths away from his goal time by running 4:21.24. Shortly after him, Cody Lund came in at 4:26.67. On the girl”s side, Emily Condic exceeded her expectations and ran a 5:15.58! She continued her day in the 800m where she ran a 2:30.17. She was joined by Kaleigh Evans and Tiffany Yathaputanon who put up impressive times of 2:29.72 and 2:37.65 respectively! The guys 800 included a couple of PRs and great races with Muneeb Ansari running an almost 2 second PR of 2:17.65. Mario Barenas had an almost 5-second improvement from his indoor 800 and a 2.3 second PR with a 2:11.32. Cody Hansen also had an almost 5-second improvement from indoor running a 2:10.78. Zach Fishman improved on his indoor time by about 3 seconds running 2:08.01. Running in his first race since Nationals last year, Sean McCarty ran a ridiculous 800 of 2:03.96 where he negative split by 2 seconds! Both the men’s and women’s 3000m Steeplechase proved to be exciting as we saw Zach Mesplay debut in the event with an impressive time of 10:31.96. On the women’s side, Emily Foley decided she was tired of being our second fastest steeplechaser ever and went and broke the record by over 10 seconds running 12:06.91! Both steeplechasers look to improve on those times this weekend, so look out!
The throwing crew had quite the long day at the track this past weekend. Everyone had a chance to throw Shot Put, and after not being able to compete last year, Greg McClain had an awesome heave of 10.88m. He was joined by Thomas “The Gecko” Nute who threw 10.92m, Liam Nassib who threw 10.31m, and Zach Sawackis who threw 7.52m. Nayeli Lara and Obi Azie threw 9.21m and 7.33m respectively in the ladies ring. Then they all got to sit and relax for a few hours as the meet dragged on. Discus didn’t start until over 12 hours after they left the CU and the meet directors ended up canceling almost all of their flights due to darkness. Shout out to their coach, Ali Djokic, for persuading the officials to let them throw once so that they could have a mark in the event, a requirement to compete this weekend. Paul Fina, the only discus thrower whose flight wasn’t completely canceled (he still only got one throw), had a massive throw of 39.72m. Everyone else only got one throw with no warm-ups, but Ali said that they were very promising and she is looking forward to seeing them all throw in better conditions this weekend.
That’s all for the competition last weekend, but you have a lot to look forward to with NIRCA Track and Field Nationals is this weekend! It is our biggest meet of the year so keep an eye out for the slew of fabulous performances sure to come!”,2017-04-07 13:30:00+00,Outdoor