The UW-Whitewater women’s indoor track & field team placed first at the Karl Schlender Invitational Saturday in their first home competition of the season. The Warhawks won with a score of 171.5, beating out Northern Michigan with a score of 154.5.
Placing first in their events were Kelly Huerta in the 200 meter dash with a time of 25.97 seconds, Ari De La Cerda in the mile with a time of 5 minutes 8.62 seconds, Zoe Roder in the high jump with a distance of 1.54 meters, and Gracie Holland in the pole vault with a height of 4.02 meters.
Other notable results were four Warhawks placed top five in the 60 meter dash. Sam Burge placed third in the 60 meter hurdles. Four Warhawks placed 1st-4th in the high jump. Gracie Holland placed second in the long jump. Ella Maher took third in the pole vault. Emily Mohs placed third in the triple jump, while Kenni Czarnecki placed second in the weight throw.
“So really pleasantly pleased with both teams,” head coach Mike Johnson said. “You know, it’s a particular challenge when you have a break this long. It’s really kind of in the middle of our season, where we’re training, but then we have meets coming up, and we haven’t started this semester. So we have people coming back. You know, they’re not quitting their routine. They’re not on campus full time, so it’s really getting the rust off. But I mean, where we’re at with our kids, they put in a lot of work over the break on their own. It really showed and so I’m really pleased, like just looking at things across the board, running events, field events, it was a pretty good day for us. So pretty happy.”
With this meet being the first meet of the 2025 calendar year, athletes came back from their hometown families to compete in the meet. With the meet being the second after nearly six week break, the athletes found a way to get rid of their winter rust.
“We’re really big on routine,” Johnson said, “and so even when they’re not here in a facility to train in a weight room, we really stress for them to keep a routine. So the more they can stick with that, it helps the transition when they get back. So trying to reinforce the routine here. Now at the end of our meet, we just kind of talked about next week, their routine kind of gets turned up again because they go back to class, so just trying to get them back in that routine out there on campus, because that consistency will build confidence for them. And that’s the key point we try to hit every day of the week.”
“The team win is always a positive,” senior runner Ari De La Cerda said. “But it is important to not settle. There are more meets left where we have to prove ourselves amongst some of the fastest runners in the nation, and the competition intensifies with each week. Athletes get stronger and stakes get higher, and every little thing will matter come conference weekend. We must keep this momentum going and continue to get stronger to continue seeing this success.”
The stakes will rise a little more when the team hosts another meet Saturday, Feb. 1, at the Squig Converse as they welcome over a dozen teams to the Kachel Fieldhouse.
