Chargers finish fourth in conference championship

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Chargers finish fourth in conference championship
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)

The men’s team finished in fourth place at the indoor championship. The 4x400m relay runners, freshmen Jamahl Burke and Sean Fagan and sophomores Benu Meintjes and Ian Calvert, took the team’s single conference title in 3:21.20.

“We wanted to do better, but everything didn’t go as we wished it would,” Meintjes said. “But that’s normal, no one always performs as they should. It’s still good as a team, making progress in the right direction.”

Burke also took second in the 400-meter dash in 48.82 seconds and fourth in the 200-meter dash in 22.37 seconds. He received G-MAC Male Freshman Athlete of the Meet honors and G-MAC Freshman of the Year award.

Fagan took second in the 60-meter hurdles in 8.19 seconds and fifth in the 400-meter dash in 49.74 seconds. 

“I wasn’t happy with my 60 hurdles, because I was going in with the top seed time,” Fagan said. “But it’s alright, it was close. I still got eight points for the team.”

In the 400-meter dash, Meintjes finished fourth in 49.62 seconds, and senior Adam Wade took seventh. In the 800-meter run, Calvert took second in 1:57.55, followed by three additional Hillsdale runners.

Junior Ben Raffin made a career-best mark of 5.01 meters  in the pole vault, taking third. In the triple jump, freshman Joshua Nichols set a personal best at 13.72 meters, and sophomore Charlie Andrews made a seasonal best of 1.92 meters in the high jump. 

“I’m really happy with the guys and the girls,” head coach Andrew Towne said. “I didn’t think the guys quite showed where we’re actually at right now, but I thought the ones that we had there performed really well.”

Raffin is the only member from the men’s team who will travel to Birmingham, Alabama, for the NCAA Division II National Championship meet in two weeks. He will compete in pole vault, in which he is currently ranked ninth.