Maines, Fagan earn athlete of the meet

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Maines, Fagan earn athlete of the meet
The Hillsdale College track and field team will travel to Tiffin, OH for its first meet of the season on Dec. 4 (Courtesy | Hillsdale College Athletics)

In preparation for their indoor season, the Hillsdale College men’s and women’s track and field teams held a Blue-White scrimmage on Friday, Jan. 15.

After the NCAA reduced the amount of meets permitted in the combined indoor and outdoor track seasons from 18 to 14, the Chargers adjusted their schedule to include additional opportunities to prepare through intrasquad scrimmages. For the second time this year, coaches brought in officials and the team’s timing company, and the runners wore their uniforms to simulate the atmosphere of a competitive meet. 

“As training intensity increases, it’s helpful to have some type of competition,” head track coach Andrew Towne said. “It was framed as ‘this is a real meet,’ other than ‘there’s no outside competition.’ It becomes mentally, ‘hey, this is a competition, this is gonna count.’ And I think it was really useful for us.” 

Coaches chose freshman Sean Fagan and junior Nikita Maines as athletes of the week. Fagan finished his main event, men’s 60-meter hurdles, at 8.38 seconds, and Maines threw the women’s shot put at 14.32 meters, only .21 meters less than her previous record in 2019. 

“After every meet, we typically recognize an individual, one from the girls’ and one from the guys’ teams, that just had an outstanding performance,” senior captain Maryssa Depies said. “That’s what the coaches aim to do in hopes of motivating us to be that person as well, and to recognize our team, because we all work really hard.” 

Fagan said being picked was a huge honor, but it wasn’t his main focus going into the meet.

“I’m more interested in the team performing well and our goal of winning conference,” Fagan said. “When we focus on the success of the overall team, the success of all its individual members follows naturally.” 

Additionally, coaches gave an acknowledgement of excellence to freshman Micah Vanderkooi and junior Alanna O’Leary. Vanderkooi completed the 800-meter run in first place at 1:56.87 minutes, and O’Leary competed in the 200 and 400-meter dashes, finishing at 26.34 and 59.70 seconds, respectively. 

“Excellence is the overarching philosophy in our program,” Towne said. “It’s what we grade ourselves against all the time, and so each week we name somebody that we felt best exemplified excellence. It’s basically a measure of, ‘How does that person compare to themselves?’ or ‘Did they get the absolute most out of themselves?’”

According to Towne, the runners spend the season working towards both overall program objectives and personal goals, which they are preparing in anticipation of next weekend’s first outside competition. Depies said she’s looking forward to the simple opportunity to compete.

“Having that taken away last year was a really big bummer,” Depies said. “I think actually seeing a full schedule and season ahead of us is just very exciting, because we are working for a reason.”

On Jan. 22, the team will compete in a home meet against Ashland University and G-MAC rival University of Findlay. 

“It should be a really, really good meet and a really, really quick meet, which is kind of what we had intended,” Towne said. “We just want a couple of really good schools.”