By Reed Dickerson

This past weekend, both the mens and womens track and field teams sent individuals to race in the North Coast Athletic Conference Multi-Event Championship. One Lady and three Lords competed, with strong results.

For the Ladies, the sole competitor was Leah Jacques 13. She finished 10th overall in the indoor pentathlon with 2,615 points. Her best event was the shot put, where a throw of 8.41 meters netted her fourth place as well as a new personal record in that event.

Jacques also competed in the 800-meter run, the 60-meter hurdles, the high jump and the long jump the pentathlons other events, while the mens team competed in a heptathlon, which also includes a 60-meter dash and a pole-vaulting section.

I also had a personal best in the hurdles, Jacques said, which was really exciting because the hurdles are what start off the day, and it is one of my more practiced and competed events, but I was very happy to see that I came out with a solid first event.

On the mens side, Brett Williams 13, Alex Benthem de Grave 16 and Jordan Wehner 14 competed in the heptathlon. Williams took 11th place with 3,647 points, Benthem de Grave 12th with 3,188 points and Wehner 13th with 3,047 points. Williams best events were the shot put, with a throw of 11.2 meters earning him third place and 558 points, and the high jump, where his jump of 1.76 meters got him fifth place and 569 points. Williams score also set a new school record, topping the old record of 3,026 points set last year by Ryan Talk 12 by a large margin.

Theyve only contested the indoor heptathlon for the past two years, Williams said, so we have a chance to best [the record].

Benthem de Grave was satisfied with his overall performance. I was surprised we had so much fun with pole vaults. Going up we really just had a blast, he said. We surprised ourselves; we did better in that than we thought. High jump was also a nice little surprise that I did okay.

The full track and field team will return to Wooster this weekend for the conference championship, where all of the Lords and Ladies will compete against eight other teams.

This weekend coming up, Im really excited, Jacques said. Theres a big competitive field with all the teams we compete against at conference, but I think that weve shown that weve been growing as a team, both on the female and male sides, and looking at the freshmen who have come in and depth were adding, I think its definitely going to be a good outcome for both teams.

[starbox id=”reed_dickerson”]