St. Thomas men’s and women’s track and field hosted 16 teams at the Joe Sweeney Invitational at O’Shaughnessy Stadium on Wednesday.
The invite was the Tommies’ first and only outdoor home meet before they host the Summit League Championships on May 9, 10 and 11.
“I think that any time you’re able to compete at home it’s kind of a little bit special,” men’s coach Pete Wareham said. “This has always been a great meet, later in the year where the weather seems to get better, so it’s always just fun in general.”
The women’s team picked up wins in the triple jump, hammer throw, javelin, 100 hurdles, 400-meter, 400 hurdles, 200-meter dash and tied for first in the pole vault, with the men’s team winning the triple jump, the 5,000-meter run and the 4×100 meter relay.
“It’s always, obviously, nice to get a win, but even more special when you do it at home, so just to be able to do it in front of a lot of family, friends, general students here, I think gives the team a lot of confidence heading into next week, too,” women’s coach Ashley Lucas said.
The weather was fair and sunny for most of the afternoon, and fans sporting many different colors dotted the stands due to the close proximity of competing schools such as Macalester College and Hamline University.
“I think it’s great that the league that we left, the MIAC, is really, really good, so when they come here and we race, it still can be very, very competitive,” Wareham said.
The meet, named for retired women’s track and field and cross country coach Joe Sweeney, recognizes Sweeney for his achievement as the longest-tenured head coach in St. Thomas athletics’ history — a career that spanned 42 seasons and saw his teams win 85 out of a possible 114 MIAC team championships.
With eight days before their final competition of the season, Lucas said that today’s meet acted as a “tune-up” for the championships. Lucas said that the women’s team held top athletes in 100-meter, 200-meter and hurdle races, and distance runners raced a lesser distance than normal.
On the men’s side, Wareham said that multi-event men’s athletes competed in only one event that they needed to “sharpen up” in. Wareham said that first-year Max Westerlund purposefully dropped out midway through the 5,000 meter in order to pace the other St. Thomas runners, and junior Isiah Hopf did not compete in his best events to limit the physical toll on his body.
“We feel like we’re in our competitive peaking point now, and we only have to maintain it for eight days, and usually you’re able to do it for 14 to 20 days, so we feel like we’re ready to go,” Wareham said.”
Other highlights included first-year Isaac Nowak, who placed second in the steeplechase with a time of 9:24.22, and junior Chloe Staub, who won women’s javelin with a throw of 40.10 meters.
“Every week she’s thrown pretty much a two-meter PR; every week she just keeps doing it, so hopefully that kind of continues next week,” Lucas said.
With their first outdoor home meet of the season under their belt, the Tommies will return to O’Shaughnessey Stadium in eight days for their first-ever time hosting a Division I championship.
“I think it’s good to just get things going with the logistics of everything, to kind of, in a way, get the kinks out before next week, but, I mean our eyes have been on the conference meet hosting pretty much this whole year, so a lot of preparation has gone into it that next week will just be kind of nice to see all that hard work come to fruition,” Lucas said.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.