At last weekend’s Gladstein Invitational, senior Todd Frickey broke his own school record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.89 seconds, while sophomore Jared Schipper set another school record in the pole vault with a jump of 5.10 meters.
While he was excited about breaking the school’s pole vault record, Schipper also expressed a sense of relief after breaking the record because he had fallen just short of breaking the record a number of times in the past.
“I felt like I broke through a barrier,” he said. “I felt like I was stuck at five meters, five centimeters, so it felt good to finally break the record.”
In addition to Frickey and Schipper’s success, a number of the other athletes on the Hillsdale College men’s track and field team have begun to hit their stride in the first four races. Five individual athletes and one relay team have already hit the provisional marks to qualify for the indoor national meet in March.
“I think we’re starting to get some things right that will be really good for us,” head distance coach Andrew Towne said. “There’s no question, the guys are definitely improved.”
Towne said he sets up his athletes’ training so that they perform at their best at either the GLIAC conference championship or at the national meet. While some athletes are already posting personal best marks, they’re even more likely to do so later on in the season.
“Non-championship season is hard for coaches because you get glimpses all the time of what your kids can do and you hope almost against hope sometimes that they’re going to be at their very best, yet you know that what you’re doing training wise, that’s just not quite appropriate yet,” Towne said.
Even with the rigor of the training before championship season, Frickey is glad to concentrate solely on track for the first time after finishing his football career last semester.
“It’s a different kind of fitness in track and in football,” Frickey said. “The way that our training works, I’m hopefully going to keep improving.”
In addition to mentioning the success of Frickey and Schipper, Towne also praised sprinters Lane White and Colby Clark, jumpers David Chase and Ty Etchemendy, and distance runners Caleb Gatchell and Joe Newcomb. After running a personal best 8:28 in the 3K at the Gladstein Invitational last weekend, Newcomb is currently ranked No. 1 in the GLIAC for the event.
The men will have this weekend off from racing, and then race at home next weekend at the Hillsdale Wide Track Classic on both Friday and Saturday. Towne considers the meet to be the beginning of “championship season,” and said he expects his athletes to begin showing improvement at the meet.
“Any time when it’s championship season, you want to start to see your NCAA-level kids to make gains towards marks that will get them in, so when we get to the GLIAC Championships, we can just focus on scoring points there,” Towne said.
Looking forward to the Wide Track Classic and beyond to the rest of the season, Towne is expecting great things from his athletes.
“I think to some degree, seeing what the women have done, the guys on one hand know it’s possible — the plan is exactly the same and the stats are exactly the same — but they probably don’t love hearing about the women over and over and over again,” Towne said. “It’s too bad, they’re going to keep hearing about them, but I think what they’d prefer is if people heard about them a little bit too.”
