02/08/08
The Baker men’s and women’s track and field teams continued to roll as several athletes placed in the Cornel Hilltop Invitational Saturday in Mount Vernon, Iowa.
The competition was composed of a variety of schools from the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and junior college range.
For the men’s team, sophomore Kome Okiomah remained consistent as he grabbed gold in the 55-meter dash. Okiomah’s time of six minutes forty-six seconds replaced his previous one to improve his national qualifying time.
Richie Bryant returned to the track for the first time in his senior year. Bryant missed interterm practices because of an internship out of the area. He said up until this weekend, he was not ready for competition.
In his first outing, Bryant finished second in the 55-meter dash and fourth in the long jump. Bryant said he looks for much improvement in the long jump, which he calls his best event.
“In the long jump, which is my main thing, I really wasn’t satisfied with it because I know I can do so much better,” he said. “I just haven’t had the time to work on it with the weather because we don’t have the indoor facilities to work on the jump stuff.”
With his junior season cut short by a hamstring injury, Bryant said his goals for his senior season include defending his indoor long jump conference title, winning the outdoor conference long jump title and moving on to win the national long jump title.
On the women’s side, sophomore Ashlee Miller led the way with two first place finishes in the 200-meter dash and women’s 4×400-meter relay. The first place relay team consisting of Miller, sophomores Kelsey Heckathorne and Katey Wegemer and freshman Chelsea Twietmeyer broke a school record and qualified for indoor nationals with their time.
Head coach Zach Kindler said he believes this is the first women’s indoor 4×4 team to qualify for nationals.
“We were pretty excited with some of our new qualifiers-the women’s 4×4 was an exciting part of the meet for us,” Kindler said. “We thought they’d had a chance, and they were able to put forth and get the times that each of them needed. They got it and it was very exciting.”
Heckathorne said each member of the team had to run their best to qualify.
“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we wanted to run so well and if one of us didn’t we knew it would be our fault if we didn’t make it,” she said. “It was a huge relief and so exciting because we knew we could do it.”
Other top finishes for the women were junior Chelsey Ornburn, placing second in the pole vault, followed by junior Kayla Irwin placing third.
The Wildcats came away from the meet with 22 seasonal bests. Kindler said this is exciting news for those improving and motivation for others to put forth more effort in practice in order to see improvement.
While most of the track and field athletes will have their first weekend off during the indoor season, a select few will travel Saturday to Lamoni, Iowa, to compete in Valentine’s Pentathlon and Mini Meet.
Kindler said the meet is targeted toward multi-meet athletes like sophomores Aaron Hannon, Wegemer and Miller to compete in the pentathlon (for women) and heptathlon (for men).
“There’s a variety of different events, and you have to be pretty skilled in each event to score well,” Kindler said. “The person with highest points at the end wins.”