Indoor track breaks school record!

The men’s and women’s indoor track and field teams competed in the Grand Valley State University Tune-Up last Friday in preparation for the MIAA Championship that will take place this weekend at Aquinas College. The meet was non-scoring but had many notable performances across the board, including a new school record! The men’s team had two first-place finishes in the meet, plus one second-place and two third-place finishes. The Flying Dutchmen’s 4×400 meter relay of Terrell Solberg (’21), Owen Ljung (’20), Collin Thomas (’19) and Brenden Jones (’20) took first with a time of 3:26.01.

Senior Justin Freeman took first place in the 200 meter dash with an adjusted time of 22.68 seconds, beating out the 2016 record of 22.82 seconds made by Boone Marois. Freeman has three individual school records: the indoor and outdoor 100-meter dash and his newest, the indoor 200. He was also part of the record breaking outdoor 4×100 relay. Junior Korey Derr took second in the 100-meter dash, and junior Josh Izenbart took third in the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.80 seconds. Ljung also came in third in the 800-meter runs with a speedy 1:54.63. The 4×400 relay of Nicole Kruithof (’20), Allison VanderStoep (’19), Sally Hansma (’20) and Chelsea Miskelley (’20) took second place with a time of 4:09.44. Junior Mitchel Achien’g took fifth place in two different events over the night, the 60-meter hurdles and the long jump.

She completed the hurdles in 9.96 seconds and jumped 5.15 meters (16 feet, 10.75 inches) in the long jump. VanderStoep took fifth in the high jump with a jump of 1.50 meters (4 feet, 11 inches), and Kruithof took fifth in the 400 meter dash with a quick time of 1:01.06. The teams compete again this weekend at Aquinas in the MIAA Championship meet. The women’s team is looking to defend the MIAA championship title from the year before, where they won with a score of 131.5 points. Trine University came in second at 130 points, and Albion College was third with 128.5 points, making the victory a narrow one. The men’s team took third last year and are looking to improve next weekend. Wish them all luck!