<turday, the men’s track and field team hosted the Carleton Relays at Laird Stadium. The Knights allowed only one athlete per team to score in an individual event, and finished fourth with 98 points in this strange system.
Gustavus won the 10-team meet with 159.5 points, followed by Concordia and Hamline. Carleton defeated cross-town rival St. Olaf, as well as conference foes Macalester, Augsburg and St. Thomas. The Tommies definitely had their entire team at the meet.
The first event of the competition provided perhaps the biggest highlight for the maize and blue, as John Davis ’11 ran to a patient victory in the 10,000 meters.
Gustavus’ Mark Hartman and Macalester’s Carl Biggers traded laps for the first few miles, kindly escorting Davis past the halfway point. Hartman ran into a metaphorical wall, falling way off the lead pace once Davis moved in front, and eventually finishing more than a lap behind the leaders.
Davis stopped the clock in a new personal best time of 32:22.35. Younger brother Bobby Davis ’13 ran a fantastic 10k debut of 33:18.67 to finish fifth. St. Olaf’s Andrew Nussbaum finished a distant eighth in 34:44.31.
Carleton’s only other event victory came in the 4×110-meter shuttle hurdle relay, a rarely-contested event. The Knights defeated a strong field consisting of Concordia-Moorhead, as anchor Kyle Burkhardt ’10 notched his first collegiate victory while running a strange mixture of 3- and 4-steps.
Ty Martin ’11 stayed upright for the entirety of the 400-meter hurdles and finished second in 58.16. He also took third in the 110-meter high hurdles in a disappointing 16.15, as Joe Concannon ’13 and Dylan Bothun ’11 were fourth and fifth, respectively.
The 4×100-meter relay race was highlighted by James Morrissey ’12 remembering to wear his dark blue half-tights. Carleton made three good baton passes and ran 44.79. Morrissey also ran an outstanding 400-meter dash, lapping a 52.76.
The Knights placed well in the jumps, as C.J. Dale ’13 was runner-up in the triple and finished third in the long jump. Dylan Cheever ’13 and Jameson Siegert ’11 were second and third in the high jump, and Evan Franco ’10 was sixth in the pole vault.
Ben Langfeldt ’12 earned Carleton’s first points in the discus throw since antiquity, hurling the implement over 38 meters to take seventh.
In the 1500 meters, Charlie Gamble ’10 ran 4:08.79 for third, suffering his first defeat of the season. Tuesday, Gamble gave his comps talk, and with that off his chest, the conference had best watch out.
Josh Campbell ’13 finished eighth in a PR 4:14.37 and a vast improvement over his 39:50.00 seed. Colin Sinclair ’11 brought his devastating finishing kick back to the sport of athletics to finish third in heat two.
Arguably the most exciting race of the day was heat one of the 800 meters. Adam Scherling led the chase pack for most of the race and finished second in 2:10.06.
With 50 meters to run, Ezra Velazquez ’10 surged past Famous Johnson ’12, inspiring the sophomore to pass some guy from Concordia. At the line it was the now-infamous Velazquez in 2:10.38 just ahead of Famous’ 2:10.70.
Famous Johnson also broke 30 meters in the javelin for the first time, and will make his highly-anticipated collegiate debut at 1500 meters tomorrow.
In section one of the 5,000 meters, Chas Karch ’13 and Michael Knudson ’11 embarked on a sub-17 quest. For the first nine laps, you could have fit the two Fellahs on a postage stamp, as they were running right together.
In the final kilometer, Karch broke away from the pack, and kicked to a second-place finish in the heat, running 16:52.20 to duck under 17 minutes for the first time in his career. Knudson narrowly missed the elusive barrier but not for lack of effort, as he too employed a remarkable finish and ran 17:00.86.
Results of the second section of the 5,000 seem to have been lost, and experts believe that race may never have actually occurred.
Tomorrow morning, the Knight thinclads will travel to Winona, Minnesota for the St. Mary’s Invitational. The Cardinals have recently constructed a new track, which will host the MIAC Outdoor Championship in three weeks.
The meet will feature good competition from Wisconsin schools of the WIAC conference. The Knights have only three meets before the MIAC Championship.
-Chris Marshall is a member of the Men’s track team