INDOOR SEASON RECAP & OUTDOOR PREVIEW

It’s always amazing how fast the track & field season goes by. All of the sudden it is nearly April 1st and we are just six weeks out from the outdoor conference meet.

Hosting the indoor conference meet at SJU was a great experience for the guys and we had several great performances from the distance group at the meet. Winning the DMR at the end of day one was probably the highlight, as St. Olaf was probably the heavy favorite on paper but we ran four great legs with sophomore Cole Stencel’s 4:17 1600m anchor leg (with a 60 second last 400m) sealing the deal for us. Check out this video highlight from the first day of the conference meet, with the DMR team’s celebration at the very end:

The 1,000m was also a very good event for us, with Nick St. Peter placing 3rd in 2:29.48 (#2 at SJU all-time), Cole Stencel placing 4th in 2:31.11 (#6 at SJU all-time) and Tommy Allen placing 5th in 2:31.78. Points! Nick St. Peter also scored in the 800m, and Eamon Cavanaugh and Jacob Malecha just missed scoring in the 5,000m in 9th and 10th respectively.

We weren’t done yet after the indoor conference meet either, as we took a team down to the Wartburg Last Chance meet to take a crack at qualifying for indoor nationals in the DMR. Our team of Nick St. Peter on the 1200m, Wyatt Witschen on the 400m, Owen Montreuil on the 800m and Cole Stencel on the 1600m ended up running 10:04.89 for a new SJU school record! They took down the record of 10:05.89 set in 2022 by the team of Tommy Allen, Brady Labine, Alexei Hensel and Mitchell Grand at the same last chance meet. We ended up 17th in Division III and only the top 12 teams qualify for indoor nationals unfortunately. However, this year’s DMR team will all be back next year and it is definitely something we will have our eyes on. Here were the splits from the team’s record-setting run:

1200m - 3:05.1 (St. Peter)
400m - 50.1 (Witschen)
800m - 1:55.1 (Montreuil)
1600m - 4:14.4 (Stencel)

Before moving on to talk about the outdoor season, here were our top open mid-distance and distance performances from the indoor season:

600m - 1:21.88 Owen Montreuil (#2 at SJU all-time)
800m - 1:56.84 Owen Montreuil (#11 at SJU all-time)
1000m - 2:29.48 Nick St. Peter (#2 at SJU all-time)
Mile - 4:20.39 Nick St. Peter
3000m - 8:42.69 Eamon Cavanaugh
5000m - 15:24.71 Eamon Cavanaugh

outdoor season preview

We had our first outdoor meet this past Friday here at SJU, the Optimistic Invite, and the weather was actually pretty good. Last week was the earliest we’ve opened our outdoor season since 2021. It wasn’t a giant meet, but it was a good opportunity to get back to racing after a few weeks of solid training since the indoor conference meet. Highlights included Eamon Cavanaugh’s 31:38 10k and Nick St. Peter and Cole Stencel’s 59 second last 400m of their 1500m race where they ran 4:02, sitting and kicking - obviously.

In terms of other notable meets, we are hoping to bring a solid crew to the UW-Platteville Invitational for a great opportunity to run some fast 5,000m races next Friday, April 11th, and we also have our eyes on a fast 4x800m relay at either the Drake Relays or Penn Relays later in April before the MIAC Outdoor Championships - which are at Macalester this year - on May 9th and 10th. Looking forward to the great spring weather and getting going with the main part of our season.

The rest of our outdoor schedule is in the graphic below. Hope to see you at a meet or two this spring!

-Maxwell

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Indoor Season Recap & Outdoor Preview