By Jeff Kontz, senior
The men’s and women’s track teams from Friends University set themselves up this weekend to accomplish something never before done in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference. Both teams won the first ever conference championship for indoor track and field.
While the recent championship was history-making, it will be overshadowed if the Falcons can complete the season sweep during outdoor track. The “Triple Crown,” as it is referred to, consists of a team winning conference championships in cross country, indoor track and field, and outdoor track and field in the same year. Since this is the first year the conference has had an indoor championship meet, the Falcons can be the first KCAC team in history to win the Triple Crown.
Friday and Saturday were big days for figuring out how the team is going to look going into the outdoor season.
“We were huge in distance and field events for both guys and girls, and that really got us ahead early,” said Brad Peterson, men’s head coach and distance coach.
Improving in some of the sprinting events will be the focus of the women’s new head coach and sprinting/jumps coach, Cole Davis. However, Davis acknowledged that he was pleased with the performance from his hurdlers Saturday.
“Our girls took second and third place in the hurdles, which was kind of a big accomplishment for me and those ladies, Maddie Behny and Lacey McFadden.”
Both coaches praised the work that throwing coach Billy Beard has done. Beard’s effectiveness as a coach spoke for itself Saturday as the Falcons Quentin Benning and Ashley Lyons were champions in both the men’s and women’s shot put while both throwing for school records.
The story of the meet, though, was likely when senior Nathan Nonhof won the pole vault with a jump of 14 feet. This was Nonhof’s first time competing in pole vault since four years ago, and it was his first meet in the past two years because of a knee surgery. He also placed third in the long jump.
As a whole, the Friends men and women dominated the meet with 10 combined first place finishes en route to the KCAC championships. The Falcons’ main competition and perennial powerhouse, Southwestern College, was left in the dust fighting more for second place than for first.
“Going into the meet, we knew that we were better than Southwestern in the field by a considerable amount, so we knew we had to dominate in that area, which we did,” said Peterson. “We knew if we could really outscore them in field events and a little in distance, we’d be sitting pretty good, and that’s what happened.”
After taking the early lead, the Falcons merely had to hang on in the sprinting events, which they were able to do. Now the challenge will be to repeat those results during the spring against a Southwestern men’s track team that has won 28 consecutive outdoor KCAC championships. The Friends women’s team will likely be the favorite in May as they compete for their third straight outdoor championship.
To help make history, both the men and women will get help from the added events in the outdoor season. The steeple chase should provide more points for the Falcons’ distance crew, and the field events should get a boost with the addition of javelin and discus. Javelin throwers Bree Renner and Maddie Hawn for the women and Derek Racette for the men were mentioned as athletes to watch this spring.
“Having about a month until our first outdoor meet, we’ll have a good opportunity to get out there and train some more, fix what we need to fix and get people put into the right events so that we’re in position to do this same thing,” Davis said.
Friends will host the first outdoor meet, the annual Enduro Classic, on March 31. On May 4, the Falcons will attempt to make history when they travel to Sterling College for the KCAC Outdoor Championships.