Principia College's Track and Field continued the season with a trip to Jacksonville, IL on Feb 8 for Illinois College's Jim Green Invitational. The men finished third out of eight teams. There were several season and lifetime bests at the meet. Additionally, a few individuals came away with some wins in their events.
A small group of men participating in the first field events left early in the morning. Senior
Chris Puduski showed no signs of grogginess as he heaved the 35 pound weight 14.28 meters (46' 10"). Last week he improved on his own school record by two centimeters. This week, he improved by 60 centimeters; that's 23 ¼ inches! That placed him third in the meet. That is currently ranked second in SLIAC for the season. Another highlight in the weight throw was freshman Matt Hagenlocher throwing for a huge PR by 1.54 meters! That is over five feet better than last week.
Sophomore
Wisdom Thomas started the day with the long jump. He was inconsistent on his approach for this event, but still placed third. However, he found his rhythm by the triple jump, and he won the event with a jump of 13.43 meters (44' ½").
Another man in the field events that set a new PR was sophomore
Marc Trinidad. He sailed over the bar in the pole vault at 3.5 meters (11' 5 ¾"). This was a new PR by five centimeters and good enough for seventh place and two points for the team.
While the field events started first, they were still being contested when the first running events commenced. Junior Josh Aleman competed in his first indoor hurdle event. Running in the first heat of the preliminaries, Josh raced over 5 hurdles standing 42 inches high in 8.73 seconds which put him in third place all time for Principia in the 55 meter hurdles. This ranked him sixth in the meet as he moved onto the finals to be held in the middle of the meet. When the finals were contested, Josh was even faster. He improved his time and finished in 8.59 seconds to grab third place for the meet and getting even closer to second all-time for Principia.
Neither the 55 meter hurdles nor the 55 meter dash are contested as often as the 60. If a college doesn't have enough space for a 60 then they contest the 55. Times in the 55 can be used to qualify for nationals in the 60 based on an NCAA conversion formula. We had several men competing in the 55 meter dash preliminaries. Junior
Corey Carter ran 6.68 to move onto the finals. In the finals, Corey ran the same time and finished in fourth. Sophomore
Joey Onyechi raced to a new PR by .24 seconds in this event and into Principia's history books as third fastest all time in the 55 meter dash with a 6.75. Joey missed qualifying for finals by .01 seconds. Freshman
Juan Parks ran his first race in a Principia uniform as he raced out to a 7.34.
n the 400 meter dash, sophomore
Dean Colarossi raced to a new PR by .27 seconds with a 54.13. This was good enough for fifth place and five points for the team.
Another win for Principia came in the 800 meter run. Senior
Abe Ott led from the start and never let anyone come close to passing him. He finished in 2:01.99 for his best indoor time ever. Freshman
Nathan Babcock was the closest challenger as he finished in 2:03.93 for second. Senior
Quinn Heinbaugh finished in fourth with a 2:06.84. This race alone gave Principia 23 of its 86 total points for the day.
Next up was the 200 meter dash. Corey got back into a faster rhythm in this race as he finished in second with a time of 22.73. This is a .3 second improvement from last week. It puts him just out of the rankings for the top 50 in the nation. Sophomore
Chris Mwaura ran only his second 200 ever. He is starting to get the feel for sprinting as he improved by .81 seconds from last week to finish in 24.81.
The meet finished up as always with the 4x400 meter relay. We had two teams entered and it was an exciting race as there were several teams changing places throughout. Our A-Team had Josh leading off and getting us in second position. Quinn led the B-Team and had us right the mix for third-fifth place. Abe took the baton for the A-Team and kept his team right behind Illinois College who had the lead. Dupage made a run from behind, but Abe held him off. Dean made up ground on the leader and had us within .1 seconds of the lead as he gave the baton to Corey who finished the job and led the team to victory by 1.6 seconds. For the B-Team, Quinn handed off to Nathan who got the team into fourth place.
Chris Mwaura ran a nice split also to move us into third place just, just behind our A-team. Juan, running his first 400 ever, ran a really nice opening 200, but just wasn't able to hold on as Dupage and Greenville overtook him. This race had everything that makes a 4x400 the perfect way to close out a track meet. Lead changes, jockeying, and joyous effort by all!
Notes
We've been competing for two weeks while some teams have competed for four weeks. Wisdom's long jump leap at our home meet still has him ranked 38
th in the nation with four weeks left of qualifying competitions.
Up Next
Next week, well, we don't quite know. We will enter some team members in a meet at Indiana University on Friday, February 14. We will not know if anyone is accepted into the meet until February 12. Check back next Friday during the day to find out who made it. If there are any live stream options we will post them on our website. It will for sure not be the whole team. The full team will next be in action at Illinois College again on Friday February 24.
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