I’m not sure where to even start with the outdoor season. To quickly summarize: we canceled some meets including two home meets, moved some more meets to Sundays due to weather, and traveled twice to Iowa to compete. The last snow piles have almost disappeared. At the very least, we made use of the new indoor track!
The season is nearing its end and the conference meet is this weekend at Bethel. We have had some great performances leading up to the meet including two school records. Kevin Arthur (Champlin Park) broke his own school record in the 200 with a time of 21.15. His old school record was 21.50 set last year. The video of his race is below.
Brett Hague (Brainerd) broke the javelin school record with a throw of 68.10 meters (223-5). The old record was set by Tom Engwall in 2003 with a throw of 67.80 meters. I’ll need to get Brett to share the story in a later post. It will be one of the stories that becomes SJU legend.
Here are some additional highlights from the season so far:
https://www.instagram.com/sjutrackandfield/
Now, onto the 2023 Outdoor MIAC Championship meet. To set the stage, we won both indoor and outdoor championships last year. This year, we lost the indoor championship to Bethel by two points. Who will prevail outdoors? Bethel has a great group of sprinters and hurdlers who will be tough to beat. Add in St Olaf’s distance runners who might carry their team into the lead. Both are good teams and have the potential to win many of the events. In our favor, we have fifty-seven athletes qualified for the meet and our goal is to score in every event. Follow along on Friday and Saturday with the links below or show up to Bethel and cheer on the Johnnies. Friday’s field events start at 2:00pm and the track events start at 2:30. Saturday’s events start at noon in the field and 1:30 on the track.
BTW: We have started awarding t-shirts to athletes who break into the top-10 of their event to commemorate their “pretty good” performance at SJU. Catch me at a meet if you are in the top-10 and would like one.