While the majority of the team traveled to Tiffin for the one day meet on Saturday, the rest of the team competed on both Friday and Saturday at Grand Valley State University.
Head Coach Andrew Towne expressed his general satisfaction with the teams performance this weekend, highlighting in particular the teams performance in the distance medley relay at GVSU. The distance medley team consisted of freshman Ross Kuhn, sophomores Benu Meintjes and Ian Calvert, and senior Mark Miller ended in 16th with a time of 10:04.12.
“I thought we did a solid job this weekend,” Towne said. “Certainly the men’s DMR did a nice job at Grand Valley State on Saturday, and I thought we had a lot of good things at Tiffin on Saturday, as well.”
Sophomore Josh Nichols who participated in both the long jump and triple jump at Tiffin said that, while there is still plenty to work on, he is looking forward to seeing the team move towards attaining its peak performance as the road to the G-MAC Championships shortens.
“We’re definitely still kind of ramping up until conference,” Nichols said. “So no one’s hitting their peak just yet, but hopefully it will hit it two weeks from now.”
Freshman Sean Fagan who ran in the 4×400 agreed with this sentiment. Fagan ran with Meintjes, Calvert, and freshman Jamahl Burke who took sixth with a time of 3:19.01.
For this event specifically, Fagan said they haven’t seen a day yet where everyone was running at their fastest, although they did perform rather well this past weekend.
“I think our four by four did pretty well,” Fagan said. “We set a season PR but I know we all definitely can run faster than we did so there is a little bit of improvement to make there.”
Fagan finished 24th in the 60 meter hurdles, while junior Ben Raffin took fourth in pole vault, with a height of 4.82 meters.
With the G-MAC Championships in mind, the team will prepare for the Hillsdale Tune Up meet this coming weekend here at Hillsdale College.
“We’ll have a variety of objectives,” Towne said. “Some kids will be trying to get on the travel squad for the G-MAC Championships, and some kids will literally just be tuning up for the G-MAC Championships.”
In preparing for the G-MAC championships the athletes will be required to focus on taking care of their bodies away from the track. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle will help them to compete at peak performance when the time comes and take advantage of the benefits their physical training has provided them with.
“The biggest thing moving forward is our kids making sure they take care of themselves in the 22 hours where they’re away from practice,” Towne said. “Then we’ll have the best chance to adapt to all the things that we’ve done in terms of training.”
Fagan echoed this exact same sentiment about bodily health emphasizing its importance in the following days.
“We’re finished with most of our hard training,” Fagan said. “At this point we’re getting our bodies ready which includes resting a lot, eating the right food, and making sure we’re keeping ourselves healthy so that we’re ready to compete in a couple of weeks.”
