The Hillsdale College men’s track and field team boasted eight athletes on an All-GMAC team from the track and field indoor season. 

Freshman hurdler Sean Fagan, who won the 60 meter hurdles at the G-MAC Indoor Championship, was the only Charger on the first team All-GMAC. Freshman high jumper Cass Dobrowolski was joined by 4×400 relay team freshmen Maliq Brock, Jamahl Burke, sophomores Ian Calvert and Benu Meintjes and triple jumper sophomore Joshua Nichols on the second team All-GMAC. Junior pole vaulter and All-American Ben Raffin was on the third team All-GMAC.

Two weeks after the indoor season wrapped up, the men’s track and field team took first place in four events in the Spartan Invitational.

This was the team’s second outdoor meet following the weekend of March 25 when the team was split between the Adidas Winthrop Invite in Rock Hill, South Carolina and the Yellow Jacket Invite in Cedarville, Ohio.

“I thought we had a lot of good solid performances this weekend,” Head Coach Andrew Towne said. “Not being so concerned with making mistakes or what might come down the road, but rather being really intentional about what we were doing this weekend.”

Fagan said that maintaining Towne’s mindset was a big part of the team’s focus in preparing for this meet. 

“The theme was go out there, don’t think, and if we make mistakes, they are going to be aggressive mistakes,” Fagan said.   

Freshman Kyle MacBeth won the javelin competition with a throw of 55.32 meters, the top mark of the G-MAC to date. He earned G-MAC Field Athlete of the Week for his efforts. 

Raffin won the pole vaulting competition, clearing 5.06 meters to set a provisional qualifying mark as well as the seventh-best outdoor pole vault outcome in DII this season. 

Nichols won the triple jump with 13.90 meters, with freshman Alfonso Garcia in fourth for 12.73 meters. 

Dobrowolski took third in the high jump with 2.01 meters, while sophomore Dagur Einarsson and senior Jacob Schmidt took first and second in the 100 meter dash. 

“There’s not a lot of comparable transitions within college athletics to have a championship conclude one season and then two weeks later be right back at it,” Towne said. “So there’s certainly challenges with that, but I think even though it’s early in the outer season, we’re moving along really well, and last weekend was certainly a big booster for that.”

While some personal goals may shift moving into the outdoor season to accommodate personal circumstances, Fagan said the overall team goals remain the same.

“As a team, when we pick our goals, we think about both seasons, so they carry over well, and personally, my goal is still just to qualify and compete at nationals, as well as scoring points and defending my title at conference in May,” Fagan said.

The team looks to travel this weekend to Lee University in Tennessee for their next meet where Nichols said he hopes to be able to compete in better weather conditions and use them as an opportunity to put forward better performances. 

“It will be nice to be down in Tennessee for the meet this weekend,” Nichols said. The weather will definitely be an improvement which will hopefully allow everyone to put together even better performances than we have up to this point.”