In the midst of a relatively low-pressure final meet before this weekend’s GLIAC Championships, transfer-sophomore Daniel Čapek won the weight throw with a distance over a meter farther than he has ever thrown before.
Čapek earned the men’s track team Athlete of the Week award for his efforts, but knows he will need to keep improving if he wants to do well at this weekend’s GLIAC Championships. He is currently ranked No. 12 in a loaded weight-throw field.
Indoor Track 2016
Evan Tandy
“The GLIAC is the country’s strongest conference in track and field, so to be in the top 10 in the GLIAC means you’re basically in the top 10 in the country,” Čapek said. “I’m looking to make finals because that means making NCAAs.”
Čapek’s throw was also a provisional mark, qualifying him for the NCAA Division II National Indoor Championships in March, but he said he will need to improve his national ranking at the GLIAC meet in order to make it into the national meet.
Because last Saturday’s meet was only a week before the GLIAC Championships, not all of the athletes competed in their regular events, and some didn’t compete at all. Those competing at the GLIAC Championships tried to improve their seed time, while athletes not racing at the GLIAC Championships tried to run a fast time in what would be their final indoor meet.
Junior Luke Daigneault led the group of five distance runners competing in the meet’s 3K. Daigneault ran a personal best 8:55.82 — 10 seconds faster than his 3K two weeks earlier.
He would have liked to race at the GLIAC Championships, but said he still believed there were positives he could take away from the race.
“My race this past weekend was really the culmination of the past three weeks of good training,” Daigneault said. “Everybody in the development group is doing work now that is going to affect them long after the indoor season.”
Head track coach Andrew Towne also highlighted a solid race by the 4×400 relay team, junior Ty Etchemendy’s season best in the triple jump, and sophomore Evan Tandy’s lifetime best in the 60-meter hurdles as highlights from the meet.
“That’s one thing that I think has been really good about the men this year is that we don’t have many guys who are sitting back. Everybody is trying to move forward,” Towne said.
This Saturday and Sunday, the top athletes on the men’s indoor track team will compete at the GLIAC Indoor Conference Championships in Tiffin, Ohio. The Chargers have an athlete ranked high enough to score in every event except for the long jump and the throwing events.
Sophomore pole vaulter Jared Schipper and the DMR relay go into the meet ranked No. 1; the 4×400 relay is ranked less than 0.1 of a second behind the University of Findlay’s No. 1 ranked team. Sophomore Lane White is ranked No. 3 in both the 200 and 400-meter dashes, while in the mile junior Caleb Gatchell and sophomore Tony Wondaal are ranked Nos. 3 and 4 respectively.
The men placed fifth at last year’s GLIAC Championships, and Towne said that the team has more quality people in a larger number events then they have in the past.
“Everybody is going to have things that go their way that they didn’t expect, and everybody’s going to have things not go their way that they didn’t expect,” he said. “But how quickly do you bounce back, how quickly does the next person go, ‘Okay, I’ll fix that’?”
