On Saturday the men’s and women’s track and field teams won the Rocky Rococo’s Invitational by a landslide.
Accolades on the men’s side were plentiful, as 12 of the competition’s 18 events were won by the Warhawks.
First-place finishes were earned by freshmen Dawson Miller in the mile, senior Mathias Werve in the 800 and sophomore Ben Watson in the shotput. The 4×400 relay squad, which consisted of sophomore Matt Santas and seniors Brian Martinezdelacotera, Tim Prelletz and Pete Schroeder, also took first.
Sophomore Nick Bee also had a strong meet, winning the 200-meter with a time of 22.55 as well as placing second in the 60-meter, running a 7.01.
“That’s probably the last race I was expecting to win,” Bee said. “Expectations for the rest of the season are to prepare pretty well for the conference meet and try to finally knock off UW-La Crosse this year.”
On the women’s side, the ladies dominated their competition. The ’Hawks ended the Invitational with 170.5 points while Clarke University took second place with 95.5 points.
The women ended up placing first in six total events. Most noteably, junior Shelby Demos broke the indoor high jump record with a height of 5-10.75. Demos recorded the top three jumps in the meet and was surprised to break the record.
“That’s always been my goal, to break the record, but I haven’t jumped that high in probably two years,” Demos said. “I’ve been working on my approach for a while and everything just kind of clicked.”
With Demos’ record-breaking jump, she met the automatic qualification standard for the NCAA Division-III Indoor Championship in March.
The women came into the year expecting to do great things, and with Demos’ jumping ability, the ’Hawks should be able to compete in every meet from here on out.
“We always set pretty high goals,” Demos said. “We just have to do better in conference this year as a team. Last year we placed fourth, so I think our main goal as a team is to place better than fourth in conference this year.”
The ’Hawks next meet is the NCC Triangular, which comes this Saturday at North Central College in Naperville, Ill.
