Bradley track and field’s second weekend of the outdoor season featured meets all across the country, with the Stanford Invitational and Mike Fanelli Track Classic in California and the Pacesetter Sports Invitational in Indiana.
While the Braves didn’t break as many records this time around, they continued to use their growing momentum out on the track with three separate outdoor program records and seven more top-10 all-time performances.
“There’s been a few records that are really good here, but we’ve kind of hoped they would get updated,” head coach Andrew Carlson said. “The women’s 5K was definitely one of them where we have the people that can do it, but then to go do it is the hard part. I felt like we’re starting the pieces in our program so that we can be at the highest level we’ve been.”
Most of those came from the Stanford Invitational, where three athletes finished on top of the podium. Junior Kaden Kingsmith was one of the top men’s runners once again, taking first place in the 800m and setting the second-best outdoor time in program history for the second weekend in a row. In other sections of the event, sophomore Jamie Phillips set the fastest time and graduate David Locke earned silver.
Junior JD Rosslee ran a 10000m in 28:25.07. Even though he finished 24th out of the 36 runners, he ran the outdoor program’s best time, breaking the record set by George Watson in 2023.
“Coming into the race, I knew that the record wasn’t gonna stand,” Rosslee said. “It was more so a case of how fast or how much it’s gonna be broken by. I was kind of hoping to get a little faster time than I had but I’ll never complain about, as of right now, a regional qualifying mark.”
The final top time for Bradley men’s track and field came from sophomore Travis Gaffney in the 1500m, whose time of 3:45.65 set the seventh-fastest time ever set by a Brave in the event, followed by freshman Sawyer LeBlanc’s seventh-place time.
On the women’s side, senior Kaitlyn Sheppard and freshman Noelle Steines finished fourth and sixth in their respective 1500m sections, the former setting the fourth-fastest time in program history. Later, in the Mike Fanelli Track Classic, Sheppard placed seventh in the 800m with the fifth-fastest time by a Bradley women’s runner.
Section 3 of the 5000m featured two Bradley runners on the podium, with seniors Trixie Wraith and Nadia Potgieter’s personal bests being enough for second and third. More importantly, Wraith took the number one spot on the program’s top-10 outdoor leaderboard for the event while Potgieter took the number two spot.
“I was in complete shock,” Wraith said. “I didn’t really know how to react at first. It was a mixture of tiredness, happiness and shock. I knew when I checked the time that Nadia had also gotten under 16 [minutes], and it was just such an amazing moment. She’s also been wanting to go on since she came to Bradley.”
“It was truly so amazing,” Wraith added about making history with her teammate. “The joy at the finish line was just great. Obviously, we’re tired, but I felt the adrenaline really overpowered the tiredness. The rest of the day, we were just absolutely beaming, and it was just really special to do it with Nadia.”
Finally, junior Rhune Vanroose finished the 3000m steeplechase just outside the top eight, setting a season-best time of 10:43.38.
With the event hosted by Stanford, the Braves faced multiple top programs and athletes, giving them a chance to see high-level collegiate competition.
“It’s definitely a big step up,” Rosslee said. “I’ve been kind of climbing the NCAA ranks for a while now, and the more I get to the meets, the further up I get in the rankings. This has been the first time where I’ve been able to get into an invitational heat and run with the big guys, and initially, I was a little bit nervous.”
“You go into the race, you see national qualifiers, national champions, and you see NCAA record holders, and it’s initially very intimidating,” Rosslee added. “But once I was on the line, I think we all had the same goal, and it was just about who was gonna execute better.”
Meanwhile, 2200 miles east of Palo Alto, the rest of the team was competing at the Pacesetter Sports Invitational hosted by conference rival Indiana State. With Carlson being all the way in California, assistant coach Cody Roder oversaw the talent in the Hoosier State.
“It’s hard to be in two places at once,” Carlson said. “You wish you could be at [both], so you kind of pick and choose where you can be, but I was getting reports back that the wind and weather were super bad, but then the times kept coming back to me, and we were setting school records, running personal bests and winning events. So, I give them a lot of credit for keeping their head up.”
In the men’s 800m, sophomore Matthew Burnett crossed the finish line first at 1:51.17, with fellow sophomore Isaac Lind finishing 1.34 seconds afterward. The other men’s winner to come from Bradley was freshman Landon Pogue, who finished with the ninth-fastest time in Braves history.
However, the best overall team performance was in the men’s 1500m, where four of the top eight runners were from Bradley. Freshman Jacob Trangmar led the pack in third, followed by junior Zach Balzer in fourth, freshman Christian Harris in fifth and freshman Michael Schmalz in seventh. Freshman Nathan Miller rounded out the top men’s performances with eighth place in the 400m hurdles.
Moving to the women’s side, junior Carissa Hamilton picked up the gold in 1500m with a time of 4:35.27, followed by freshman Wiepke Schoeman’s sixth-place finish of 4:39.26. Sophomore Julia de Palma’s second-place finish in the 400m hurdles was followed by a second-place finish from the 4x100m relay team of sophomores Olivia Redpath and Carolina Martinez and freshmen Ava Wilson and Julia Brown, which ended up being another school record.
Along with her 4x100m relay race, Redpath ran a 12.24 100m to secure eighth place with freshman Ayva Rush finishing in the same spot in the 400m. Bradley’s final podium spot ended up going to junior Eilen Brenne, who set a season best 2:14.28 in the 800m and capped off a weekend that the Braves needed.
“You see that drive and that want to succeed from everyone,” Wraith said. “You see how focused everyone is before the race, and being able to hear that their work is paying off reassures you that you can do that as well. Hearing how well they had done definitely motivated us to continue that and hopefully run the same so we can come off feeling really proud of ourselves.”
Bradley returns to California on April 16 to compete at the Brian Clay Invitational, hosted by Division II school Azusa Pacific. With another week to prepare, the runners’ minds are on practice and sharpness.
“I think a lot of the hard work’s been done in the last six or seven months that [we’ve] been training,” Rosslee said. “So right now, it’s more so just about keeping the mind sharp, recovering and just trying to be as fresh and as good as possible on race day. There’s not much that can be improved or more fitness that can be gained in the next week or so, but I trust in the training, grinding in silence, and that’s what’s gonna get [us] to the finish line, hopefully first.”
