Thank you to everyone who showed up for the alumni meet last weekend! I was impressed by the turnout. Apparently you all are starved for some track and field. Surprisingly, we had good weather and a few of us even got our first sunburn of the season. Of course, today (Thursday) it’s back to the unusually cold April and some snow.
We were treated with a number of impressive performances:
Lukas Buehler (2016) dropped a strong 4:17 in the 1500m run.
Matt Scherber (2013) still has some youth in his legs with his 15:22 run in the 5k.
The alumni vault squad of Thomas Franek (2020), Ryan Bromenschenkel (1999), and Mike Leither(2008) placing 3rd, 6th, and 8th against the college guys.
Collin Trout (2020)with a big win in the triple jump with a jump of 13.15m (43-1.75ft).
Steve Dalhed (2005) apparently made use of our alumni meet layoff the last two years and impressed the young guys with his 54.24s in the 400m dash.
The Alumni Performance of the Meet has to go to Jeff Eckstein (2000) for running a long leg of the 4x400m relay. He charged down the track to pick up the baton from an ailing teammate and ran nearly 540 meters. I’m not sure how the officials missed that one.
This week, our main meet was supposed to be at Gustavus today and was canceled because “sometimes it snows in April”. Thankfully, we lucked out by sending eleven of our athletes to California for the Bryan Clay Invitational. This is the biggest group SJU Track and Field has sent out west and they started competing this morning with Lloyd Young (Jr, Bloomington) in the 10k run. Lloyd won his heat (there were three heats!) with a time of 30:23.02. He is now second on the all-time list at SJU behind John Cragg’s 29:57.
Bryan Clay Invitational Live Results
Thanks again for all of the great alumni support. We appreciate everyone showing up for the alumni weekend. It is a special day to have familiar faces return to campus. Also, thank you for the donations which allows us to send the guys to California. They have been talking about this trip for quite awhile and were excited to be in some warm weather.
Next week we will be competing at Carleton on Saturday, April 23rd barring any more snow.
Jeremy