What’s that? Did we hear that right? Yes indeed, it’s the most wonderful time of the year…track season! This year, ITFC started off their early bird season with not one, not two, but three powerful performances at a plethora of places! First, we sent some of our star-studded sprinters and toughest throwers to the Windy City Classic at Gately Park in Chicago. Next, we sent a good group of athletes to the ONU Holiday Invitational at Olivet Nazarene University. Finally, we sent some titans of our own to Illinois Wesleyan’s Titan First Chance Meet in Bloomington! Read all about it here!
Windy City Classic @ Gately:
We start our long weekend journey with the Windy City Classic in Chicago, home to many of our athletes that made the trip down to the Windy City! Cheered on by her highschool coach at the meet, Dionne Edwards started the day for the team with a lifetime PR of 8.31m in the shotput with less than a year of throwing experience under her belt.
Marcus and Dionne with their former high school coach, Megan Koehnen, at Windy City Classic
Sprints coach, Adam Adil, flexed some sprinting muscles coming back from a major injury from last season with a 60m dash time of 7.45. Take this as a warning sign for the major damage Adam will do on the track soon enough.
The 400m Dash saw three of our athletes competing and setting some very impressive PRs. ITFC legend, Kat Vande Pol, set an indoor lifetime PR for the 400m dash with a 60.09 taking a commanding lead in just the first 100 meters of the race to run the entire rest of the race by herself to win her heat and place 6th overall at the meet. Kat is in strong early-season shape, so watch out!
Kat can’t have all the fun yet. Wanting to flex their long sprinting skills as well, Marcus Scott and Cesar Maldonado took to the track to race in the same heat of the 400m. Marcus set a lifetime PR that best both his indoor and outdoor PRs with a strong 56.13 to win his heat. Cesar, who unfortunately did not have his racing spikes with him and ran in workout shoes, kicked down two people at the end to finish with a strong 59.16. Who needs spikes when you’ve got raw strength? Beware folks, this man has a scary kick, and with racing spikes, it will only be even scarier.
Now it’s time for Xavier London to jump into the scene. Coming back from respiratory problems which sidelined him from practicing in the previous weeks, he managed to jump 1.70 meters in high jump (5’ 7” for you non-metric folks). Transitioning to long jump, Xavier placed 7th with a jump of 6.36 meters. Xavier had this to say afterwards, “I ended up jumping my second best long jump of all time, so I’m pretty happy with how today went!”
Closing out the meet was Cesar Maldonado in the 200m, this time geared up with Adam’s racing spikes to run the second best 200m of his career with a 26.06. Great job, Cesar!
Olivet Nazarene University Holiday Invite:
With how well their teammates competed at the Windy City Classic in their minds, more of our club athletes were prepared for some stellar performances at the ONU Holiday Invite.
Now, it’s only the first meet. SURELY we won’t see a record fall yet…right? Wrong! Melissa Aninagyei-Bonsu started the day off by breaking the long jump record with a jump of 5.23m, besting the previous record of 5.18m and placing second in the meet. Talk about a hot start! Jumps Coach, Derrick Stokes, set a huge PR for himself in the long jump soaring to 5.20 meters while simultaneously coaching his own athletes. In the interest of transparent reporting, when reached for comment about rumors concerning his ability to levitate…Derrick did not provide a reply.
Melissa takes flight in the long jump at ONU
Melissa followed her club record breaking long jump PR by setting another club record and PR in the 60m dash with a blazing fast 7.87. How many records can she break? We can’t wait to find out! She went on to run a 7.90 in the 60m dash finals to place 4th in the event. Nic Soto, Tyler Klein, and Chris Raymond-Bertrand came with speed on the mind, running 60m Dash PRs of 7.34, 7.13, and 7.04 respectively. Tyler and Chris went on to 60m dash finals to place 3rd and 5th with times of 6.93 and 7.07. That 6.93 was both another PR for Tyler and a new club record!
Mid-Distance Coach, Norb Nieves, took to the track for the Mile Run after a long XC season with teammate Anthony Rizk who we were overjoyed to see return after recovering from an injury. They both ran a strong race to finish 4:58.32 and 5:21.34 after some intense workouts the last couple weeks. Great work, gentleman!
Up next was the 400m Dash with freshman, Lucca Bibbey, leading off with an indoor PR of 1:03.91 in a well-paced race. Nic Soto showed up with a 53.44 in his race in what definitely was a perfectly flawless start. Don’t ask anyone about it. Trust me, it was 100% perfect. Moving up another 400m, the 800m runners took to the track. In the first heat was Jose Ocegueda Zuniga coming off a tremendous XC season along with long-sprinter, Gerardo Porras, who moonlights as an 800m runner. Gerardo and Jose ran a gutsy race finishing with times of 2:13.98 and 2:15.40 respectively. In the next heat was Henry Hornbrook, the “Townie Stallion”. Running an incredibly well executed race led Henry to an indoor PR of 2:08.72. Peter from Nationals would be proud.
Now, let’s jump on back over to the Field events; both Neha Vellala and Melissa made Triple Jump finals, where Neha jumped in her first meet with the club leaping to 9.28 meters! Awesome job, Neha! Melissa set another lifetime PR by jumping 11.93m in the triple jump. This not only won her the meet but also set her third club record of the day raising the record from 11.00m to 11.93m! At this point, she’s gotta have broken a record for the most broken records. What a first day on the club!
Lucca and Neha enjoying their first ever college track meet with ITFC at ONU
The final event that ITFC participated in was the 200m Dash. Derrick Stokes leapt from the sand pits to the track surface and hit the ground running with a 27.17. In the next heat, newcomer Leo Cumbie ran his first race with the club running finishing in 25.70. Driving himself to the meet was Kevin Saju, just so he could run with Nic Soto in the 200m. That extra sleep did Kevin well. Although they didn’t hold hands in a beautiful display of friendship across the finish line, Nic and Kevin did set personal indoor PRs in the 200m dash with times of 23.37 and 23.53 to go 1st and 2nd in their heat! In the final heat we had Tyler Klein and Chris Raymond-Bertrand running impressive indoor 200m PRs of 22.22 and 22.40 respectively. I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing 22’s. Tyler is banging on the door of the current 200m Indoor Club record of 22.17, which was set on a 300m indoor track.
Leo Cumbie spikes up in preparation for his first race as an ITFC athlete
Illinois Wesleyan Titan First Chance Meet:
Seeing how well everyone did at Windy City Classic and ONU Holiday invite, some more ITFC athletes wanted to have a shot…shotput that is…competing unattached at the Titan First Chance Meet. See what I did there? I regret nothing (This was Beau’s joke, not mine). This meet saw freshman Quinn Rivara make his debut for the club in shotput. Quinn powered out an impressive 10.07m with the 16lb shotput, which was not far behind his 11.20m PR from highschool which was with a 12lb shotput! Head Coach and newly minted Throws Coach, Beau Barber, made his first ever attempt at shotput and managed to throw 7.94m. Beau is becoming quite the jack-of-all-trades!
Quinn Rivara launching a 16 lb shotput at the IWU Titan First Chance Meet
Our own Mid-D coach emerita Katherine Vande Pol was the lone woman competing for ITFC at this meet running both the 300m and the 200m. Kat is very environmentally aware and has recycled her hip numbers by only running in lane 6 so far this season #ReduceReuseRecycle. Winning her heat of the 300m Dash and getting 2nd place overall at the meet with a 42.67 has confirmed “Operation Sub-60 Indoor 400m Dash” is in full swing for Kat. Next up for her was the 200m which she had intended to be a “Workout Race” to prepare herself for competing in multiple events in-season. This combined with forgetting for the first 50m that she was in a 200m Dash and not 400m Dash, makes her 27.56 an all more impressive time to open the season with only 0.26 seconds behind her lifetime indoor PR.
Well! I don’t know about you all, but that was quite an exciting set of weekends! Again, great job to everyone who competed. With all these amazing performances from these early bird meets, our athletes’ personal PR’s and the remaining club records have been put on notice! And stay tuned to see our improvements come the next meet, as well as our powerhouses who have yet to race! Hope to see you all on the track very soon! I-L-L!
Happy Holidays,
Norb (and Beau)