While the rest of school sought the sun or feverishly caught up on homework over spring break, Hillsdale women’s indoor track and field took second place at the NCAA Division II national championship in Birmingham, Alabama. The Charger men finished in 14th place with three All-American performances.
“The men were pretty darn solid,” Head Track and Field Coach Andrew Towne said. “That’s our third-highest finish ever. But they were totally overshadowed by the women.”
The women’s second place finish matches their performance in December at the D-II cross-country national championships. They earned 40 points and were in first place at one point of the meet, but Central Missouri finished with 47. Junior Emily Oren finished with two national titles, winning the 3K on Saturday after being part of the first place Distance Medley Relay team Friday.
“For the women, we went into the cross-country championship ranked sixth and I felt like we had a chance to be on the podium, and we were obviously, being second,” Towne said. “We were also sixth-ranked going into the indoor championship.”
Success for Charger women started with junior Kristina Galat’s second place finish in the 5K on Friday night. She posted a time of 16:37.37.
“I went into the race knowing that I had a shot at placing high but also knowing that things don’t always work out as planned,” Galat said. “I got second, which was really awesome because last year I didn’t even make it in the 5K.”
Success continued with a national championship in the DMR, breaking a school record with a time of 11:25.
“All the girls ran really well,” Towne said. “Kate Royer was a great lead off. Corinne Zhener was a great 400 leg. Amy Kerst came back on a really tough double. She had tried to qualify for the 800 earlier in the night and then to come back just a little bit of time afterwards and put another good 800 meter leg up. But Emily finished it off really, really well. That’s our first relay national title in terms of NCAA championships.”
For the girls who make up the DMR, the race was an exercise in teamwork.
“It was really really cool because watching it play out, everybody’s leg was really important tactically,” senior Amy Kerst said. Running two 800 meters went much better than she thought it would. “I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my legs did move when I needed them to.”
Junior Corinne Zehner said that each team member set up the next perfectly. “I was really excited and really happy with what we did.”
“It was fun because there were three other girls with me that won the national title,” Oren said.
Oren won the 3K with a personal record and Division II championship meet record time of 9:16.81. Galat got second with 9:20.46, beating her old PR by 17 seconds. The No. 1 seed led until Galat went for the race and Oren went with her and they pulled away over the last 600 meters.
“It was definitely 100 percent that Kristina was the reason why I could do that, because she helped me so much in the race,” Oren said. “In the middle I was getting a little iffy about whether I was going to be able to do it. Fourth place seemed really nice in the middle, then Kristina came and passed me and I thought, ‘Ok, you can run with her because you always do it,’ and then we kind of took off and just dropped everyone and it was really fun.”
Oren’s and Galat’s points were key to the whole team’s finish.
“I had told one of our coaches right before the 3K, if we are going to have a chance we have to get 15 points here, which seems like a lot when points are hard to come by period and one of your entrants into the race is coming off a 5K the night before,” Towne said. “She might be on the old struggle bus a little bit. But those girls both rose to the occasion to come away with 18 points, that put us in a nice spot.”
The 4×400 meter relay made sure the excitement and tension stayed high. Charger women posted a time of 3:47.86. Zehner said she was crying.
“It didn’t go exactly as planned,” she said. “On the second exchange the baton was almost dropped, but it ended up being okay and we ended up having a PR and that placed us fifth and we were just ecstatic. We couldn’t believe it. We were in the first heat and we thought we were done for, honestly.”
Overshadowed though they may have been, Charger men showed their mettle.
“I thought the men did a really good job,” Towne said. “The men aren’t where the women are at in terms of the whole team, but there’s still some really good things there. Josh Mirth did a really nice job in the 5K. He’s a kid that, this was his first national championship in track and field, struggled to get there in the past, and I don’t think you can say enough about someone who’s down to their last chance, hasn’t been able to do it, and then not only do they get there but they run a great race and they’re fourth.”
Mirth is very happy with his 14:29.27 finish.
“It felt really good,” Mirth said. “I was super happy with how that race went. My goal was to be top eight, I was seeded ninth—top eight is All-American. And I would have been really happy with top five, so ending up fourth meant it played out perfect.”
On the flip side, Towne said, for a freshman to make it to the national championship can bring enormous pressure. Freshmen Lane White and Jared Schipper both had podium finishes on their first rodeo.
White ran the 400 in 47.64.
“Lane handled it like he’d been there a zillion times,” Towne said. “He ran a new PR and was fourth as well, which is really impressive.”
Schipper reached 5.05 meters in the pole vault, finishing as national runner-up.
“Jared Schipper had probably one of the more interesting events of the weekend. Same thing, he’s a freshman, first go around. Down to his last attempt at the first height, makes it, which is very unnerving for a fifth year senior let alone a freshman. At the next bar, he’s down to his last attempt, makes it….Next bar he’s the only one that makes it on his first attempt, which in the vertical jumps means that if they go to the next height and nobody makes the next height, Jared’s the national champion. So he went from literally in boxing terms laying on the carpet to now he’s up while people are getting the 10 count. The first two rounds of the next bar, everybody misses, so now everyone’s down to their last attempts, and the kid in front of him makes that bar, and he almost did as well, and so he ends up national runner-up. But to think about being almost out of it as a true freshman and then to make a swing to potentially being the national champion, I think that gives you an idea about his composure and his personality.”
Towne thinks the women’s 4×400 and the rest of the meet until the end might be one of his favorite parts of the championship.
“As the head coach, being in the title hunt, those last 45 minutes, is really neat,” Towne said. “It was literally a pendulum swinging back and forth for the last 45 minutes. It was very memorable. I wouldn’t say it was necessarily fun.”
Of course, Towne said, he wouldn’t trade the blood pressure for being out of the running.
“Until we have a men’s cross-country team, and a women’s cross-country team, and men’s and women’s indoor track and men’s and women’s outdoor track that are all on the podium all the time, we can’t be satisfied, because that is what our intention is.”