The Lawrence University men’s and women’s indoor track teams headed to Monmouth College this past weekend to compete at the Indoor Track and Field Championships. This was their conference tournament, and they were looking for strong performances from the entire team.
The first event Friday was the 5,000-meter run, and the men’s side came out strong. Mark Sprtel ran a 16:53.10 to open up strongly for the men. Following that up was the men’s 4×200-meter relay. Lawrence came out and ran a 1:37.79 to finish in eighth place.
Not to be outdone, the women came out in the same 4×200-meter relay and ran a 1:50.76, which was good for fourth place. To continue the strong opening day performances, the men’s 1,600-meter sprint medley team came out and ran another strong race. They ran a 3:55.04, which was good for a ninth-place finish. The women again refused to be outdone, and picked up a seventh-place victory in a time of 4:39.94.
As the individual events started, the Vikings continued their strong opening day. Madeline Steininger picked up a fourth-place finish in the preliminaries of the 55-meter hurdles with a time of 9.14. In the 55-meter dash, Marva Goodson grabbed a second-place finish in the preliminaries with a blazing time of 7.45, only 0.01 seconds off the leader’s pace. The men had a great race from Ben Hartman in the 55-meter dash as well, with a time of 6.83. Both Steininger and Goodson qualified for the finals of their respective events.
In the field portion of the day, Lucas Below came out strong with a seventh-place finish, jumping 3.68 meters in the pole vault. The next two events were great for the Vikings, as Steininger picked up a victory in the high jump with a jump of 1.56 meters, and Marva Goodson picked up a victory in the long jump with a jump of 5.38 meters in the preliminaries.
Steininger also picked up a fourth-place finish in the long jump with a jump of 5.06 meters. In the finals of the long jump, Goodson and Steininger picked up second- and fourth-place finishes to finish well for the Lady Vikings. The men continued a good field day with an eighth-place finish in the shot put preliminaries by Rob Lawson. Lawson qualified for the finals and picked up eighth place again with a throw of 13.93 meters.
Saturday opened with the 55-meter dash finals, and Marva Goodson got the Vikings off to a great start with a third-place finish in a time of 7.51 seconds. Goodson followed that up with a sixth-place finish in the 200-meter dash in a time of 26.76 seconds. In the 400-meter dash, senior Lisa Ritland finished 10th with a time of 1:04.15. In the 55-meter hurdles finals, Steininger finished up a great weekend with a fourth-place finish in a time of 9.17. In the women’s distance medley, the Lady Vikes finished in fifth place with a time of 13:20.20.
When it came back to the track portion of the day, Ben Hartman picked up an 11th-place victory in the 200-meter dash with a time of 23.99. Mark Sprtel earned himself an eighth-place finish in the 800-meter run in 2:05.10.
When the dust settled and the events finished, the Vikings had a great weekend. The men finished up with a strong overall team finish, and the ladies picked up fifth place and 49 points. This next weekend is the Last Chance Meet at Carthage where the runners go and try to earn their way to the Division III Championships.
Track competes well at conference champs
