By Reed Dickerson
On Saturday, March 30, the Kenyon Outdoor Track and Field team competed at the College of Wooster, where the Lords took second with 104 points and the Ladies took sixth with 55 points.
The two teams are still transitioning from the indoor track season, according to Peter Granville ’16. “It’s still the beginning of the season. This was only our third meet,” he said. “And so we’re still thinking about everything that happened during the indoor season and transitioning outward.”
The women’s team came away with one top finish, two second-place finishes and a lone third-place finish. Alexia Derkasch ’13 took first in the 400-meter dash, beating Ashland University’s Abby Stock by 1.39 seconds with a time of 59.05. Her time just skirted the school record of 59.04 seconds set by E. Ann Batchelder in 1983. The Ladies placed second in two events: Leah Jacques ’13 in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 1:08.47, and Casey Brumback ’16 in the triple high jump with a height of 9.99 meters. Finally, Hildy Joseph ’13 finished third in the 5K run with a time of 20:07.58.
On the men’s side, Carlo Gagliardo ’13 finished third in the outdoor 200-meter dash with a time of 22.25 seconds, breaking the previous school record of 22.34 set in 1981 by Fred Berand. Gagliardo also holds the records for the indoor 60-meter dash, the indoor 200-meter dash and 4×200-meter relay as part of the team.
“I was feeling good, I had been training pretty hard the week before, and I had it in my head that I wanted to break that record at the Wooster meet, and it just turned out to happen that way. ﾅ [the record] was set in 1981, [and] I really wanted to take that off the board,” Gagliardo said. “I’d like to get the 100-meter record as well, that’d give me every sprint record in the school.”
In other events, Granville took second in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 10:38.28, finishing a mere five seconds behind Scott Ackerman of Ashland. Brett Williams ’13 also finished second in both field events, with a 45.58-meter-long throw in the javelin toss and a high jump height of 1.78 meters. The Kenyon 4×100-meter relay team of Jake Fishbein ’13, Kye Duren ’16, Joey Cordle ’14 and Gagliardo stole second place out from under Ashland’s nose by a margin of 0.19 seconds with a time of 44.24 seconds. Finally, Noah Winters ’15 ran two top-five individual performances, in the 400- meter with a time of 50.62 seconds, and the 200-meter dash with a time of 22.84, taking third and fourth in both respectively.
“We have a pretty good team this year, and we might be able to make a run at Conference,” Gagliardo said. “We just want to continue to make strides. It’s still pretty early in the season, so we just want to stay healthy and get the best times we can.”
The Lords and Ladies will compete next at the Marv Frye Invitational, hosted at Ohio Wesleyan University on April 6.
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