In Brookings, SD, at the SDSU Indoor Classic 12 athletes traveled and competed against over 1500 athletes in various events from over 40 schools across the country.
The women's team had a relay team and 3 individuals competed. The Distance Medley Relay (DMR) team competed Friday evening against 9 other teams. The DMR team dropped a significant amount of time since they ran it back in January, but unfortunately missed out on qualifying for nationals by about 50 seconds.
Three women competed in individual events on Saturday as the meet continued. Lauren Rodacker raced in the 600m with a personal best time of 1:50. Lauren raced hard with a strong start and continued moving up through the middle of her race, but as she came in the last 200m she worked hard to finish strong but had used a lot of energy in the first part of her race.
Emberlyn Hoffman-Gaschk raced in the 800m, with the goal of qualifying for nationals. Unfortunately at the start of her race she was boxed in and had to drop back to get on the outside of the pack to move forward. She recovered from this move, but then was tripped up from someone cutting in with about 200m to go to the finish which slowed her up where she missed out on the qualifying time. However Emberlyn is currently ranked 47th in the NJCAA with her personal best time she ran at the Bison Open the weekend before.
Chaneille Richardson ran two individual events, the 60m dash and 200m. With the 60m dash Chaneille was automatically advanced to prelims where she did not have to race the qualifying round of the 60m. During the prelims Chaneille ran a personal best time of 7.94, which put her in 20th place out of about 100 others who raced the 60m. Following the 60m, Chaneille then raced in the 200m dash. In her heat she came in with one of the slowest times, but she got up and out as soon as the gun went off and ended up winning her heat, beating all others by 0.3 seconds. This time was almost a full second faster than her previous fastest 200m. Chaneille finished in 27th place with a time of 25.97 out of 104 athletes. This also places her in the top 50 in the NJCAA.
The men's team also began the meet with a DMR on Friday evening. The team unfortunately lost contact with the main pack early in the race which led to a tough race for the later legs of the relay running alone. The DMR team finishes the season with a personal beest of 10:59 which puts them as 25th in the NJCAA.
Four athletes on the men's team competed in individual events beginning Saturday morning with field events. Chase Keating competed in both the high jump and the long jump. In the high jump he finished in 25th place with a jump of 1.76 meters and in long jump he finished in 11th place with a jump of 6.32 meters. Chase also raced in the 200m dash running a personal best time of 23.38 seconds. Skyler Rains and Sawyer Haas also competed in the 200m dash where Skyler ran a personal best of 23.25 and Sawyer ran a 24.34. James Springer raced in the 800m where he competed hard through his race and ran consistently compared to his time from the previous weekend at the Bison Open with a 2:03.
The Bucs will travel to Spearfish, SD on Saturday, February 18th to compete one last time for the indoor season at the Stinger Open at Black Hills State University. Field events begin at 11:00 am and running events start at noon. You can watch the livestream of the meet at: https://rmacnetwork.com/bhsu/?B=526979