CSB and SJU track teams prepare for MIAC meet

Both track and field teams at St. Ben’s and St. John’s have found great success as the season has progressed and look to continue that throughout the rest of the year into the MIAC Championships and beyond. “Our goal each season is to have our athletes perform their best at the end of the season. For some athletes, that means setting their personal best in their last meet. For others it is qualifying for the conference championship or the national championship,” SJU head coach Jeremy Karger-Gatzow said. Like many other spring sports, track and field has dealt with inclement weather that prolonged many opportunities to practice outdoors. “Our team has had a theme of ‘relentless’ this year, and they have lived it through this tough spring. Through it all, we have set many personal records and school records. We are excited to finish the season strong and give it our best at the MIAC Championships,” CSB head coach Robin Balder-Lanoue said. The Johnnies won five out of nine events on April 23 at Gustavus Adolphus’s Lee Krough Invitational. Sophomore thrower Joe Mensen won both the discus and hammer throw with distances of 38.01 and 46.37 meters. Senior Brett Hague won the javelin with a season-best distance of 60.75 meters. First-year Kole Guth broke St. John’s first-year record in the pole vault to win the event with a seasonbest height of 4.60 meters, surpassing the previous mark of 4.59 meters in 2008. SJU took home the topfive places in the 1,500 meters, with junior Tommy Allen taking first with a time of 4:02.88. On April 26, both CSB and SJU sent split squads to the University of Minnesota’s Running on Hope Invitational and Gustavus Adolphus’s Gustie Twilight. For the Bennies at the University of Minnesota, first-year Lauren Berg recorded a personal best and fifthbest mark all-time at CSB in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 1:03.98, placing her in eighth in the event and second in the MIAC (0.77 seconds behind first). She was also part of the second place 4×400 meter relay that finished with a time of 4:06.33, which included sophomore Emerson Knapp, junior Sidela Nyuga and junior Ella Young. Young set a new personal-best in the 800-meters with a time of 2:20.41, earning fifth place. Sophomore Kalli Smith finished ninth with her own personal best of 2:22.92. The 4×100 meter relay team of senior Hailey Johnson, junior Tiana Johnson, firstyear Myah Nelson and junior Kate Gallagher placed fifth with a time of 49.94. “The U of M meet, with slightly better weather, provided a great opportunity to have great performances. These conditions allowed me to run one of my best times of the season,” Gallagher said. “The U of M meet was also our first time running the 4×1 where everyone was healthy. Our clean handoffs and improved time helped us build our confidence as a relay team leading up to the MIAC Championship.” St. John’s won six events and finished second in three others. Senior Brady Labine took first in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 54.91. Junior Carter Grove won the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a personal-best 9:19.24, which ranks second in the MIAC. Sophomore Aiden Chalmers took first in the 5,000-meters, clocking in at 15:46.87. Junior Joe Charbonneau placed first in the pole vault at 4.65 meters (first in the MIAC), with firstyear Kole Guth right behind him in second place (4.50 meters). Junior Dan Eickhoff followed in fourth at 4.30 meters. Senior Brett Hague placed second in the javelin with his season-best distance of 63.23 meters, beating his prior season-best set three days earlier by 2.48 meters. This mark is also the eighth-best in NCAA Division III this spring. Senior Elijah Wade finished second in the triple jump (13.57 meters) and sophomore Zach Schaffer finished second in the long jump (6.83 meters). Senior Kevin Arthur recorded a personal best of 21.15 seconds to win the 200-meter dash and break his own SJU record. His time also sits at the seventh-best in Division III. “It was a huge relief and an exciting moment after the 200m race,” Arthur said. “I had run 21.5 seconds multiple times last year and this year into headwinds, so it was about time I ran faster as I had tailwind this time.” After running a 10.56 in the preliminaries, Arthur finished second in the 100-meter dash by .004, with a time of 10.575. He ranks top among the MIAC in both events. Arthur was also part of the 4×100- meter relay alongside sophomore Emanuel Popoca, Labine and firstyear Caden Wheeler, which clocked Division III’s 20th-best time of 41.24 seconds for first place. “As a team, we are finally putting the pieces together. We have new faces in the relay and we are beginning to figure each other out, as well as our handoffs,” Arthur said. At the Gustie Twilight, senior Maggie Beckmann broke the CSB discus record with a throw of 40.42 meters, topping the record of 39.75 meters set in 2014. Senior Jaeden Frost led the NCAA Division III participants in the discus with a mark of 44.25 meters placing him third overall. Sophomore Joe Mensen followed in second at 38.77 meters, placing sixth overall. On April 27 at the Drake Relays Distance Carnival, junior Fiona Smith shattered the school and MIAC record in the 5,000-meters, clocking at 16:05.43, which beat her previous mark by just over 11 seconds. Her time is also fourth-best alltime in all of Division III and the second-best this spring. “It was definitely special to break the CSB and MIAC records in the 5k. I knew that getting a PR would mean breaking a school record, so I knew that was in reach going into the race, but I hadn’t looked at or considered the possibility of breaking the MIAC record, so seeing that I had accomplished that was pretty special,” Smith said. The Bennies won a pair of titles and had 12 top-eight finishes at the Janis Rider/Doug Bolstorff Invitational hosted by Macalester College on April 29 and placed fourth overall. Young won the 400-meter run in 1:00.69, setting a new personal best. The 4×100-meter relay squad of Hailey Johnson, Tiana Johnson, Nelson and Gallagher captured first with a time of 50.37. “Winning the 4×100, especially at Macalester, where weather conditions were not ideal, helped us to build off the confidence that we gained during the last few meets. We can still improve our handoffs, but this meet taught us that even when weather conditions and handoffs were not ideal, we are still able to find success,” Gallagher said. The Johnnies will compete at the St. Olaf Invitational on May 6, ahead of the MIAC Outdoor Championships set for May 12 and 13 in Arden Hills at Bethel University. “We finished second place as a team last year, and I know we would all love to see us match or better that finish,” Fiona Smith said. “I think if we all perform our best on meet day, we can work together to score really well, and we’ll be proud of whatever finish knowing we all did our best and gave it our all.”