St. Thomas men’s and women’s track and field teams sit at fourth and fifth place, respectively, after the first day of the Summit League Outdoor Track and Field Championships Thursday at O’Shaughnessy Stadium.
Graduate student Anna Swanson broke her own program record in the javelin throw with a championship-best 47.65 meters at the University of Minnesota Track and Field Stadium. Swanson’s winning throw earned her team 10 points on the leaderboard and made her the first Summit League champion in program history. Junior Chloe Staub’s eighth-place throw of 39.05 meters gave the Tommies an additional point.
“Momentum is huge, and I think it’s one of those things where other athletes were sparked from that,” women’s coach Ashley Lucas said. “So like, even Anna throwing at the U, we had a lot of team members over there, but then that brought the momentum back here for Ava to run the 10K race better than she was ranked.”
Junior Ava Pankratz set a personal record of 36:04.7 in the 10,000-meter run while finishing fourth, earning St. Thomas five more points.
Two Tommies competed in the first half of the women’s heptathlon: sophomore Olivia Keller and first-year Lillian Allen. Keller placed second in the multi-event’s 100 and 200-meter dashes.
“(Keller) started off well in the multis. Lilly Allen went four for four in PRs in the multi, so hopefully she continues to carry that over, today to tomorrow,” Lucas said.
In the men’s decathlon, junior Jack Rosner won three of the five events held on Thursday: the 100 and 400-meter dashes and the long jump. Rosner currently sits at second on the decathlon leaderboard, 187 points behind first place and senior Nate Raddatz sits at fourth.
“I think we have a real strong decathlete group of athletes. Jack is one of the top ones, and he’s having a great meet so far. He’s extremely valuable to us, so I want him to keep doing what he’s doing,” men’s coach Pete Wareham said.
Raddatz earned five points with his fourth-place javelin throw along with two points from first-year Grayson Spronk and one point from senior Cameron Schulz.
Sophomore Sean McNiesh took fourth place in the 10,000-meter run, and senior Charlie Caven ran a 30:24.22 personal record to earn him fifth. The Tommies came away with nine points from the race.
McNiesh, Caven and the other three Tommies all fell behind the top two finishers, who ran sub-30 minutes and both beat the former conference record.
“I think that there’s some really good talent in the distance group in the conference; that’s why that guy got the record,” Wareham said. “And our guys are battling right up there, so our distance group has been great all year, and to get fourth and fifth was very impressive.”
Thursday marked the first time that any Summit League championship had been hosted at St. Thomas.
“I think the whole team is really excited, and they’re ready to compete. We had some great performances today,” Wareham said.
Lucas says there are pros and cons to hosting the championship, but being on campus helped the student-athletes.
“I think it’s good for our kids to stay in their routine. A lot of them still went to class today before coming over here. They just seemed more at ease being at home,” Lucas said.
The meet will continue on Friday, May 10 at O’Shaughnessy Stadium, starting with the men’s decathlon 110-meter hurdles at 9:45 a.m.
“Obviously it’s kind of just a small snippet today, I’d say … the more meat and potatoes is tomorrow, so you’ll just see more of the team competing tomorrow, so they’re all excited and ready to go,” Lucas said.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.