Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Track & Field Update


The track and field season is already upon us! A little over a week ago we opened the indoor season by taking a small group of sprinters and jumpers to Notre Dame for their annual December Blue and Gold Invitational. We decided to keep the throwers and the distance crew at home. This was a typical December meet as we used it to judge where we are at in our training, and we had some good performances.

Sophomore Tyler O’Brien was the lone event winner on the evening, running 22.28 in the 200m. Last year Tyler opened his MU career at this meet by setting the Marquette school records in both the 60m and 200m. Sophomore Nick Byom started his season out well by tying his lifetime best in the High Jump with a jump of 6’7” (2.01m). This was especially satisfying to me as we are training very hard right now and for him to jump a PR when we are not even in our competition phase of training bodes well fro the future!

Junior Michael O'Brien recorded a career-best time of 1:05.75 in the 500m for a third-place finish. Mike’s 500m time was almost 1 full second faster than what he ran last year at this meet and made him number 10 on the all-time list. Mike is a 400 hurdler outdoors and, along with the other 400 hurdlers, is training with the 800m runners this fall to build up his endurance for that grueling race. So far the training change seems to be paying off. Mike later teamed up with Freshman Anthony Held, 5th-year senior Nick Van Deraa and Senior Tom Cassady to run a solid 4x400m relay. Their time of 3:20.91, though not as fast as we want t be, was one of the faster 4x4s we have run in December.

The lone highlight on the women's side was Katlin Millin as she finished second in the 1000m with a BIG EAST qualifying time of 2:59.04. Katlin ran too conservatively in the race and ended up having a lot left at the end. Though her time was not quite what she was hoping for, we saw several good things in her race that leads us to believe that she will be great this year in her signature event the 800m.

Several of our top women in the sprints and jumps sat out. Notables include 2008 NCAA regional qualifiers Carrie Schmid (redshirt) and Erynn James (injury). Also out was the anchor of the 2008 BIG EAST outdoor 4x800m relay Sarah Verdoliva (injury).

Right now we are on winter break. We have a few locals in all the event areas working out over break, but a majority of the team is back home training hard and getting ready for the quickly approaching 2nd semester.

We will return to action on Friday January9th when we head to Grand Valley State where we will be competing on their brand-new 300m track.