Last weekend, Friday April 17th, and Saturday April 18th, the men and women’s track and field went to Augustana College for the annual Meet of Champions. Thirty-two schools attended the meet.
The Scots went on to compete in one of their coldest track meets this season with extreme wind that made many events harder. High jump being one of them, usually the bar is set at a height, and the athlete has three individual attempts to clear it but because of the heavy wind the bar was consistently knocked over before athletes could attempt to clear it. “I think the team did good,” said Damone Johnson.
The throwers were the first to compete in these conditions. Kayla Braun moved into the top 15 nationally as of Saturday, April 18th with a throw of 13.48 meters in shot put. Two of the men throwers cracked into the top 10 in school history for hammer throws. Gunner Bryant broke his PR by 3.41m in the hammer by throwing 51.13m, and Blake Orwig threw 51.80m, breaking his previous record by .82m.
“It’s not the best conditions, I mean it has its benefits with some of the running events but, competing in the cold makes a lot of events harder,” said Johnson. Numbers agree with Johnson because the Scot saw 23 PRs.
Logan Morse attempts to jump 1.85m. Photo by Patrick Curry Jr
A lot of athletes overcame the cold and used it to their advantage. When running in heavy wind, the direction you’re running can help or hurt your time. If the wind is at your back pushing you, then you have a positive wind which make running easier, but if you’re running against the wind it’ll be a negative because it is going right into your face.
“We have Tashawn in the finals for triple jump. Our freshman Maddox Clark made finals in the 100 and ran 22 in the 200,” said Johnson.
There were three PRs in the 200m dash from Jerry Reed 22.83 seconds, Johnny York 22.68s, and Maddox Clark 22.71s. Clark also had a PR in the 100m dash with a time of 10.86 seconds.