The Hillsdale College men’s track and field team won the Hillsdale Tune-Up meet on Saturday, Feb. 19 in preparation for the G-MAC championships that are set to begin this Friday.
The meet was hosted by Hillsdale College and saw several encouraging performances from Charger athletes.
“I think everybody either competed really well or had things that looked good going into conference,” freshman Sean Fagan said.
Hillsdale won the meet with a score of 80 points, taking first in four of the events. Adrian College was second with 77 points, with no other team within 20 points.
Junior Ben Raffin won the pole vault clearing 5.01 meters, sophomore Ian Calvert won the 800 meter dash setting an indoor personal record at 1:56.02, sophomore Joshua Nichols won the triple jump with a distance of 13.85 meters, and Fagan won the 60m hurdles with a time of 8.32.
Head coach Andrew Towne expressed particular excitement with the performance by Raffin who has seen much success on the team for the two years he has already competed.
“We were really excited last week about what Ben did,” Towne said. “I think there’s more for Raffin there.”
Fagan, who highlighted last week his hope that the team would hit its peak moving into the championships, said that he thinks this is likely to happen.
“It definitely feels like it’s where we’re at,” Fagan said. “It seems like across the board everybody is having very successful practices and finding confidence going into conference that we’re where we need to be.”
The Chargers will continue to emphasize staying fit and healthy on and off the track this week as they move towards the big meet. Junior Charlie Andrews said he believes that now is the time for the athletes to take good care of their bodies before the G-MAC’s.
“Something that coach always says is that the hay is in the barn now,” Andrews said. “You’ve done all the work in the preseason leading up to this point so there’s not really anything you can do in practice to be better prepared besides fine tuning and staying in good shape.”
The team will travel to compete in Findlay, Ohio this Friday and Saturday. The multis will begin on Friday morning and the rest of the events will follow afterward with the majority of them taking place on Saturday.
“We’re really happy with how the guys continue to progress,” Towne said. “We’re looking forward to a true championship meet this weekend and all the challenges that come with that, and we’ll be ready to go on Friday and Saturday.”
