While I have been busy preparing for our Last Chance meet and next week’s National Championships, I have had little time to reflect on last week’s MIAC Championships. I get nervous for championship meets and after the all the adrenaline wears off, I’m exhausted when they are over. Like most meets, I went into last week’s excessively pessimistic. Firstly, several members of the team were getting sick or just recovering. Then, I was expecting anything from second place to fourth as the team scores looked like they would be close. One bad event and the team drops a couple places pretty quick. I recall in 2017 when I thought the MIAC Conference Championship team scores would be really close. We were 15 points behind second place St. Olaf, but yet we finished in seventh overall.
The best way to sum up Friday’s events is “average.” The guys who were supposed to make finals did. We didn’t sneak anyone extra into finals. However, we did have some notable performances. The hammer throwers started things off with all three setting personal records. Kai Barber (54.09m) moved to second place on the All-Time Johnnies Performance list. Eli Mollet had a great freshman year (46.64m) and senior Ryan Reiter closed out his collegiate career with his best of 47.34m.
Saturday, however, was far from average. The day started great with our two javelin throwers (Ryan Thompson and Kyle McKinney) sneaking into finals and scoring. The team never really looked back after that. Not to be outdone by his teammates, Max Martin had a beautiful hurdles race. He was smooth over the hurdles and cracked the 15.0 second barrier for the first time. Max is an emotional guy and it was fun to watch his reaction when his time of 14.96 appeared on the scoreboard. A great way to end his collegiate career, as well.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the event that really just blew us all away: the 100 meter dash. Yes, it was that good! Johnnies placed 1st, 2nd, and 7th. Nick Gannon worked hard for seventh place after missing most of this year’s indoor and outdoor seasons with hamstring injuries. Drew Schoenbauer’s performance gets overshadowed, but he took second, and becomes the second fastest in Johnnie history, and is currently ranked 11th in the country. In addition, Drew came back later to win the 200m dash. As for 100m dash champion, Ryan Miller ran 10.39 seconds and as of writing this, is ranked #1 in the country for Division III. Yes, that is also a new school record. It is also the fastest in Division III since 2014. If you are wondering about Ryan’s 200m performance, no need to worry. I’ll make sure he has the right spikes with him next time.
Next week, several of us will be headed to the Spire Institute in Ohio for the Division III championships. Hopefully after tonight, we’ll be increasing our qualifiers. Regardless the outcome, I feel very confident that we’ll have some funny conversations in the van and have a delicious meal together on the way home. Stay tuned.
PS: If you’re into the facebook scene, Johnnie alum Dan Murphy has started the SJU XC/TF Alumni & Friends page and welcomes you to follow along, too. He has made it to many of our meets and has posted some great videos including several from the MIAC Championships: https://www.facebook.com/JohnniesXCTF