With various strong performances, the Charger men took first place at Saturday’s home meet. The Conference Crossover, held at the Margot V. Biermann Center, drew teams from the G-MAC, GLIAC, and GLVC. While the Crossover didn’t exactly turn out the way it was planned, head coach Andrew Towne said it was a success with those teams that did participate.
“What was designed originally was three teams from the G-MAC, the GLIAC, and the GLVC,” Towne explained. “We had three teams from the G-MAC, but only one from the GLIAC and one from the GLVC. I think it is something that will grow. Everybody really enjoyed it.”
The Crossover served as a transition from the Division I stage of University of Michigan’s Wolverine Invitational.
“Anytime you are at home there is certainly an aura of comfort,” Towne said. “It is a pretty drastic change in atmospheres, but I think everybody enjoys being at home and competing. There’s just a familiarity and a comfort.”
As the hosts, Hillsdale added a few events to the meet to keep things interesting.
“There were a few things that we added that you normally wouldn’t have,” Towne said. “We ran the 400 hurdles. That is something you don’t run inside. They do in Europe a little bit, but that’s not something you would do at most meets.”
Senior captain David Chase said the team performed well overall and saw some great individual performances as well.
“I think the guys were really excited to compete at home,” Chase said. “Across the board we had a lot of good performances.”
Included in those good performances was sophomore Joey Humes, who broke the Biermann Center record in the 1000 meter run with a time of 2:30.34.
“Coach told me to run the 1K,” Humes said. “The goal is to run 30 seconds per 200 meters which is a 4 minute mile pace. So he said just try to do that for five laps. The Biermann record was 2:32 and 30 seconds per 200 would be 2:30. It was just supposed to be a workout and people don’t run the 1K a lot, so I thought it would be kind of cool to get a facility record.”
Humes has been running a total of 80-85 miles a week to train for his distance events.
“The goal for the upcoming weeks is keep training high volume,” Humes said. “Eventually we’ll cut back 20 miles and that should get us ready for conference. In terms of volume, I’m second on the team.”
That cut in training won’t be for the next couple weeks. In the meantime, Towne wants his athletes to trust the process and commit to their goals.
“It’s still early, but the thing that we keep talking about is that as coaches and athletes everyone really engages in the process,” Towne said. “We have a chance to write our own book and our own story. How do we want that to look? How are we really engaged in that process to get better? I feel like we’re starting to make some real strides with that.”
With only about a month until the start of the G-MAC Indoor Championships, the team competes this coming weekend at the GVSU Mike Lints Alumni Open.