For the seventh consecutive year, the Illinois Track and Field Club won its home meet, Illinois Club Relays, on both the Men and Women”s sides. Although they have had close scores in the past, no meet has ever pushed ITC to use all of its depth and strategy before. The best example of meet tactics was shown by Seniors Greg Netols and Evan White in their mile run. In the past couple weeks, these two have competed with each other in an attempt to break the club record of 4:17. In this race, however, Netols and White formed a two-man wall and forced the whole pack besides the first 2 runners to slow down. That pack consisted of 3 Hoosiers, the team ITC beat only by 8 points total. The two seniors were able to finish 3rd (4:26) and 7th (4:28), and Indiana’s 2nd, 3rd, and 4th runners all ran in the mid 4:30s. This allowed Freshmen Jack O’Neil (4:32) and Mike Mayer (4:35) to make up ground in the 2nd heat and win the event altogether for ITC.
Women Highlights
The ITC women had by far their best performance in the 60m dash they have had all season, as Sophomore Jess Ayers, Junior Caroline Szostak, Junior Lauren Jonen, and Graduate Student Erin Murphy took first through fourth, respectively. Ayers made her first 60 meters of the season a memorable one as she broke the club record by .08s with her time of 8.15, while Szostak is now tied for 3rd on the all-time list (for the third week in a row) with her time of 8.26. Murphy would partake in 8 events total, including her club/meet record in long jump of 5.1m, her second place effort in a club record triple jump of 11.00m (ousted by a 1cm), her fourth place high jump PR of 1.45m (lost by 5cm), and her 5th place shot put performance combined with Sophomore Ehitare Emuze’s second place club record throw of 9.91m gave ITC the win in the shot put. Sophomore Haley Dorfman tied for first in the high jump with her jump of 1.5m to secure 1st place in the high-jump relay, and Freshman Maggie Gruben was our second best long jumper to give us 1st in the long jump relay as well.
On the distance side, this is a very different squad that showed up than what was at NIRCA Cross nationals. With Grimes now a varsity athlete, Mocogni an early graduate, Burkhardt recovering from injury, Guetterman in Tanzania studying abroad, and Choi also recovering from injury, it was time for our younger women to step up. No one stepped up more than Junior Abaigael Madden, who now has a better time in her indoor mile (5:37) than her outdoor 1500m. Madden placed 15th in the mile while getting a PR of 10 seconds. Madden is also 6th on the all-time 3000m run list with her time of 10:53.04. It is always a pleasure to see her start from behind and build up near the top in her races. Freshman Lexy Rudofski is fully healthy again (Wooo!), and made her track debut with the team’s second fastest mile time of 5:43.17 (20th in the meet). Senior Monica O’Connor was a scorer in both the mile (5:43.23) and the 3000m run (11:08.03).
Now it’s time for a lot of names and times to be spewed off (AKA relay results without splits…)!
The 4×200 (Szostak, Murphy, Ayers, and Jonen) took 1st in the meet with their almost record breaking performance of 1:50.04 (the record is 1:49.7). The 4×400 got their club/meet record as Ayers, Murphy, Senior Thea Cudnowski, and Jonen tore down the house with their time of 4:08.1. Our second 4×400 consisting of Sophomores Hannah Behle and Selena Wallace, Freshman Kathleen Murphy, and Szostak ran good enough for third place with their time of 4:30.1. The SMR consisting of the usual suspects (do I have to say Szostak, Murphy, Jonen, and Cudnowski again?) took first with their time of 4:23.8. They were only 1.3 seconds away from the club record.
Men Highlights
It’s a shame the men’s team had to oblige by NIRCA rules and disallow the scoring of Allen Terry and Nic Baumgartner, because they are so gifted in the 60m hurdles. Terry won the 60m hurdles with his time of 8.63, Baumgartner was second with his 8.92, and Senior Tyler Blum finished fourth with his time of 9.33. However, they were unable to score points. Blum was able to take second in the high jump with his 1.8m flight. Paired with Sophomore Mike Kreiser (1.65m) they were able to tie for second place in the event. Junior Sebastian Alvis (11.73m) and Unknown age Adam Goldsher (11.49m) combined their efforts to win the Triple Jump Relay. Unknown ages Ross Romane (11.94m), Geoff Segal (10.67m), Adam Auten (10.46m), and Junior Kevin Jorgensen (9.53m) dismantled the competition in the shot put, placing 1st through 4th respectively. According to an unnamed source, the meet record may have been thrown with a 14lb shot, so these might be the best throwers we have ever had.
I don’t want to go into too much more detail about the Mile, but I would like to point out that we had 10 guys under 4:50 and in the top 50 in the mile (out of 128). We have lots of depth when we go into Bloomington. The 3000m run turned to the unexpected as the first heat’s Sophomore Jared Ripoli DNF’d due to a hip injury. This caused graduate students Brad Coyle and Henry Wolf to step up in the second heat. Pushed by Illinois Elite’s Frigo and Spillone, Coyle and Wolf had mega PR’s as they finished at 8:56.39 (12th) and 8:57.91 (13th) good to place the team 3rd in the event. Sophomore David Choi (9:10.28) finished 4th for ITC.
The relays started out grim, as our A 4×800 team had a mishap with their baton, which forced the B 4×800 team (Sophomore Ryan Somerfield, Freshman Jack O’Neil, Freshman Griffin Bojan, and Senior Michael Giberson) to step up and take 4th overall with their time of 8:15.70. 3 out of 5 4×800 teams for Illinois were under 8:20. ITC finally put together a good 4x200m (Senior Jayme Roberts, Adam Goldsher, Sophomore Mike Kreiser, and Matt Lopez) at Club Relays, as they broke the meet record and are now #2 all-time for ITC with their time of 1:33.93. The relay that put an exclamation mark on the meet was the SMR (consisting of Lopez, Goldsher, Roberts, and Decker) which beat the club record by 4 seconds with their winning time of 3:35.41. The 4x400m (Roberts, Lopez, Freshman George Gunter, and Decker) ran the 3rd fastest indoor time for ITC ever, finishing 2nd at the meet with their time of 3:29.45.
