The Bradley indoor track team was in action last weekend at the John Gartland Invitational tournament hosted by Indiana State.
Coming off strong performances at the Eastern Illinois John Craft Invite, the Braves turned continued the success across the board last Saturday. The sophomores highlighted the meet for Bradley with a pair of wins and multiple high placings.
The mile run was the most successful event for the team. Sophomore Alec Danner won his first collegiate race with a time of 4:16.97 while his teammate, senior Luke Hoffert came in at third at 4:19.02. Sophomores Joey Simon and Evan Mitchell crossed the line for the Braves posting times of 4:26.70 and 4:28.13, respectively.
“I think it was a good opener for the season,” Danner said. “Of course, I’m happy with the win but more so the added confidence going into the more important meets.”
Sophomore Alex Klinker also won his first race in the 600-meter run. He posted a time of 1:24.73, missing his personal record by just a mere five-hundredths of a second. Fellow sophomore sprinter Miguel Agyei had his second consecutive fifth-place finish in the 60-meter hurdles. He improved on his time dropping from 8.83 seconds at EIU to 8.77 seconds at Indiana State.
On the women’s side, junior Ally Lampert finished with a fifth place in the 5000-meter run in 19:11.11. Sophomore Hannah Ivy finished eighth in the 60-meter dash with a time of 8.15 seconds, good for her personal best and sixth-lowest time in school history.
Danner said these results are indicative of the team’s potential and what they can do this season. He believes this team has the balanced personnel to be competitive in the hurdles, long jump and sprints.
“I’m looking forward to seeing these improvements across the board,” Danner said. “Just looking at where everybody’s at in training, we’re all trending upward and we are going to see a lot of breakthroughs this season.”
Head coach Darren Gauson echoed that sentiment and has also seen the strides his athletes have made in training. He is looking ahead to the Mayo Invitational on Feb. 7-8.
“We are looking good in practice, everyone is looking fit,” Gauson said. “[But] we will know a little bit more after this weekend [and] Notre Dame about how good we really are.”
Gauson said the athletes have only been on campus for a little over two weeks and are still getting in optimal shape. Preparing for the conference tournament is his ultimate goal, and he views the time prior as a build towards the MVC championship at the end of February.
“In basketball terms, you just want to manage their minutes until the bigger competitions and the finals,” he said.
This year’s indoor squad is younger than the past according to Gauson. With a lot of his successful seniors having graduated, the team has calibrated its goals around that.
“We’re going to try to win 5,000 [meter run], on the men’s side, win 3,000 [meter run] on the men’s side,” he said. “On the women’s side, McKenzie Altmayer was second in the 3000 last year hopefully she can win an event, we [also] won the DMR (distance medley race) so we want to be competitive in that.”
Overall, Gauson hopes to see some of his young athletes push themselves and score some points with top-8 finishes on both sides. He hopes the youth of the team continues growing and gaining valuable experience for the future.
The Braves track team will be back in action tomorrow in Iowa City, Iowa at the Black & Gold Invite hosted by Big Ten program University of Iowa.
