The Penn men’s and women’s track and field teams competed in their first away meet of the outdoor season this weekend as the distance runners and field competitors traveled down to North Carolina State for the Raleigh Relays and the sprinters continued down to the University of Miami for the Hurricane Collegiate Invitational.
Records were broken throughout the three-day competition weekend, proving that the team needn’t be on their home turf to perform well.
Freshman thrower Elias Chase started the weekend strong for the Quakers in Thursday’s first event — finishing the javelin throw in sixteenth place with a 56.09-meter throw.
Sophomore thrower Kai Deines followed up in the men’s shot put, throwing 17.09m, which landed him in sixth place. Deines also competed in the men’s discus, finishing in twelfth place with a personal best distance of 50.34m.
Chase reported feeling disappointed with his performance, attributing it to new training techniques, but he is already focused on how he can use this meet to improve his competition mindset for the rest of the season.
“Part of the issue this meet [was that] I was thinking about too many different cues,” Chase said, “That messed up my technique.”
Senior pole vaulter Benedikt Sachta was the next Quaker to compete on the field. On Friday — the second day of competition — Sachta won the men’s pole vault invitational with an outdoor personal best height of 5.25m. This now lands him in sixth place on the Quakers’ all-time performance list.
“It’s a safe qualifier for the NCAA preliminaries,” Sachta commented. “Even though it was really tough conditions with the wind … I managed to do pretty well, and I beat some guys [who] were definitely a lot better than me, so I’m really excited about it.”
Soon after Sachta stepped off the runway, it was senior jumper Conrad Moore’s turn to compete. He ultimately placed fourteenth in the men’s high jump after clearing a height of 2.00m.
Moore debuted a new approach to jumping at the Raleigh Relays and is hopeful that it will lead him to more successes later in the season.
“I feel optimistic about my performance,” he said. “I think there’s room for improvement, but I feel like my change step is working out– because that’s what I’ve been doing this past week from a new approach. … I feel like it’s showing progress, and I’m excited to see how it transitions into the later meets.”
The women’s team had a similarly strong performance. Senior pole vaulter Kai Eisenhardt placed sixth in the pole vault at the invitational with a personal-best 3.95m height. Teammate sophomore pole vaulter Evangeline Thomson’s 3.95m pole vault earned her second place.
Senior thrower Scott Dochat rounded out the field events on Saturday, finishing in 12th place in the men’s hammer throw after recording 59.53m.
The runners experienced just as much excitement on the track — starting with senior distance runner Dylan Throop, who is also a member of the cross-country team and a regular competitor of track and field’s longest races: the 5,000m and 10,000m, Throop broke his own program record in the 10,000m, finishing in 28:27.40. Among 123 competitors, he ranked in 18th place.
Throop’s fellow senior distance runner, Luke Johnson, set a new personal record in the 5,000m, the second-fastest time in program history. Recording a time of 13:48.03, Johnson finished in 30th place out of 233 athletes. Johnson credited his consistent training for his success.
“I think distance running kind of compounds over time,” Johnson reflected. “So … you’re not going to get fast in a few weeks. It takes months and years.”
The 5000m is equivalent to 12.5 laps around a standard 400-meter track. With so much repetition, distance runners often have to focus on their pace and environment to stay motivated. Johnson only thinks about one thing: “Beating everybody else [on] the track.”
Senior distance runner Edwin Klanke finished the weekend with two strong performances. He ran the 1500m in 3:46.33 — finishing in 44th place out of 208 runners.
He later competed in the men’s 800m and recorded a PR of 1:49.12, finishing in eighth place out of 165 athletes. He was followed by junior distance runner Liam Going in 17th place, senior distance runner Kyle Miller in 19th, and freshman distance runner Benjamin Markham in 34th, all of whom also set new personal records.
Meanwhile, down in Florida, the Quaker sprinters were flying past their competitors with the help of the ocean breeze.
Freshman hurdler/sprinter Chikaodinaka Akazi won the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 13.97 seconds. Akazi maintained a strong performance at the Invitational with a fourth-place 11.98-second finish in the 100-meter sprint and a third-place finish in the 4x100-meter relay.
Senior sprinter Jocelyn Niemiec dashed to a first-place finish in the 400m with a time of 54.09.
Junior hurdler Shane Gardner and sophomore sprinter/hurdler Ryan Matulonis competed together in the 110m hurdles and finished second and fourth, respectively.
Matulonis also finished in first place in the 400m hurdles with a time of 51.06 seconds. His teammate, freshman distance runner/sprinter Cade Swart, followed, winning third in 53.38 seconds.
Gardner, Swart, and Matulonis also competed in the men’s 4x400, with sophomore sprinter/hurdler Alexander Sadikov coming in second place with a time of 3:14.26.
Rounding out the competition in Florida was sophomore sprinter Nayyir Newash-Campbell, who placed fifth in the 200m and fourth in the 400m. Sadikov followed Campbell, finishing in the 400m in seventh place, recording 47.72.
The track and field program will reunite next weekend at Franklin Field to compete alongside Cornell against Oxford and Cambridge, the first international meet of the season.
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