Charger indoor track and field opened what is referred to as its championship season at home this past weekend with the Hillsdale Wide Track Classic in the Margot V. Biermann Center.
Head Coach Andrew Towne said the meet was a solid start.
“It doesn’t mean that at the start we have to be ready to go for the full next month, but it means we need to keep making preparations looking towards the end of the month, and I thought we did that,” he said.
The women’s team posted eight provisional marks at the meet, which qualify but do not ensure spots at the NCAA Division II championships. Five men provo’d.
“Justin Folley had a really solid heptathlon both days,” Towne said.
Folley, a senior, posted a provisional mark, placing first over all with a score of 4892.
Junior Emily Oren provo’d twice last weekend.
Once as a part of the women’s Distance Medley Relay with a first-place time of 12:02.74, “We’re twelfth on the list for nationals, which is exciting, but I think we can go a lot faster,” she said.
“The women’s DMR was ok,” Towne said. “They got on the board, but they’ll be a lot faster this weekend.”
Oren also had a provisional qualifying time in the 800 of 2:13.47.
“I PR’d in that and posted the top time for the GLIAC, sixth in the nation, so that was exciting.”
Looking forward to the rest of the season, Oren said she doesn’t know what all she’ll be running. While the 3k is her main event, her range extends from the 800 to the 5k.
She has high hopes and expectations for herself nevertheless.
“As far as nationals go I would at least like to get an all American title in two more events if not a national championship title in at least one; that’d be really nice,” she said. “Conference, I’d really like the DMR to win again, because we’ve won the last two years.”
Freshman Colby Clark was named GLIAC Men’s Track Athlete of the Week after taking first in the 400 with a time of 48.98 seconds. A provisional qualifying mark, that time set a new meet record.
“I was really excited to run it,” Clark said. “It had been a couple of weeks since I had had a race so I was ready to go.”
There was a false start and a delay to the start of heat, and while the time was a personal record after it was converted for track size, Clark is confident he can beat it. He is sixth in the Division II for that event, and first in GLIAC.
Junior Corrine Zehner posted three provisional marks, in the 400, 60 hurdles, and 4 by 400 relay, but sees definite room for improvement.
“I haven’t really shown what I can do in either the 60 hurdles or the open 4,” she said. “The meet, it wasn’t bad, we didn’t run slow, but we didn’t run our best. The level that we’re showing at practice we did not show at the meet, for sure.”
“Sometimes the girls, our relay, will tend to overthink a little bit,” Zehner said. “That’s something I think we’re going to work on this weekend a lot is just being crazy, going out and just running as hard as we can.”
This weekend, 10 women and 7 men will travel to Boston to compete while the rest of the team is at Grand Valley. Towne said the Boston trip is in preparation for the NCAA championships, which will be on a banked track.
Zhener is looking forward to the banked track practice.
“I actually really like them,” she said. “They’re fun. They’re really different, for sure. You don’t have to lean as much, you can just fly.”
Clark is also looking forward to it, and Oren hopes to PR in the mile this weekend.
