Concordia athlete breaks long jump record in season opener track and field meet

Photo description: Sophomore Hayley Miles competes in the long jump event. 

Photo credit: CUNE Photo Gallery

Maddy Peters

Sports Editor

The Concordia track and field team started their season with the Bulldog Early Bird Meet held in the Walz Fieldhouse from Dec. 8-9.

The team had a whopping 14 golds, nine silvers, and 12 bronzes for the meet with 18 athletes qualifying for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Indoor Championship meet.

The meet started off Friday afternoon with the multi-event women’s pentathlon and men’s heptathlon. Their events finished up Saturday morning with two Bulldogs coming out on the podium: freshman Zoey Walker who won second in the pentathlon with 3,070 points and sophomore Josi Noble in third just behind Walker with a total of 3,067 points.

The sophomore sprinter from Lincoln Lutheran Adriana Rodencal had a fantastic day coming back to the track breaking her 60-meter hurdle record of 8.72 seconds in the preliminaries for the event with an 8.65. She figured that was so nice she would do it twice and broke it again an hour and a half later with an 8.57 second place win in the finals. Both times gave her an automatic qualifying bid. Sophomore Kayla Svoboda won third in the same event with a time of 9.38.

Rodencal would instead have her moment in the spotlight in the women’s 60-meter dash and the 200-meter dash winning both events with a 7.85 and 25.98 respectively. Junior Joel Rathe won third in the men’s 60-meter dash with a time of 7.01. Rathe would find more success in the men’s long jump with a nationally qualifying jump of 7.18 meters.

Juniors Jenna Esch and Trinity Tuls won first and third in the women’s 400-meter dash. Esch had a time of 57.64 and automatically qualified for nationals. Tuls was a few seconds behind with a time of 1:00.17. Another junior, Colby Sugden, won second in the men’s version of the event with a time of 50.79.

Esch won the gold in the women’s 600-meter run as well with another automatic qualifying time of 1:36.35. Yet another junior, Jordan Koepke finished second just behind Esch with a time of 1:36.73 which also qualified her for nationals. Freshman Adric Schmitz won third in the men’s 600-meter run with a time of 1:27.95.

Another familiar national name, senior Rylee Haecker, won first and set an automatic qualifying time in the women’s 1,000-meter run with a time of 3:01.00. Junior Rhaya Kaschinske won second in the same event with a time of 3:08.06. In the women’s 1-mile run, sophomore Hannah Beintema won third with a time of 5:42.48.

Following a spectacular spring semester performance, senior Lauren Dawson came back to the 3,000-meter racewalk event with a first place win of 17:23.31. Dawson only hit the B-standard for the NAIA championships, but due to low participation, she sits at sixth in the nation and has ostensibly qualified for the national race. Freshman newcomer to the racewalking scene Caleb Schlichting won third in his debut 3,000-meter race with a time of 19:03.32.

Junior Julie McIntyre and senior Calvin Rohde won twin golds in the women and men’s 3,000-meter run. McIntyre finished with a time of 10:26.30 and Rohde with 8:48.36. Sophomore Keegan Beisel won second in the women’s race behind McIntyre with a time of 10:50.72.

Concordia had three relay teams for the meet, all of which were successful. The women’s 4×400-meter relay made up of Esch, sophomore Kayla Kirchner, Tuls, and Koepke won the event and set an automatic qualifying time of 3:57.82. The men’s 4×400-meter relay team won third in their event with a time of 3:39.31. The men’s distance medley relay team of freshman Trey Robertson, Sugden, sophomore Trevor Kuncl, and Rohde was the only team to compete but missed the automatic qualifying time by six seconds finishing with a 10:24.58.

The field portion of the meet was spectacular as well with a majority of the qualifying athletes coming from this crew. The big news of the day came from sophomore Hayley Miles who broke a 34-year-old record in the women’s long jump with a jump of 5.90 meters or 19′ 4.25 beating out Concordia athletic hall of famer Carol Bailey’s 19′ 0.25 jump. This also automatically qualified her for the national championships.

The pole vaulters were on point as well with senior Zach Zohner winning first with a whopping 5.06-meter jump. Fellow seniors Josie Puelz and Amira Cummings won second and third in the women’s pole vault each with a 3.57-meter jump (Puelz had the better record). All three athletes automatically qualified for the national championship. A fourth senior, Sydney Reichert, also finished fourth with a 3.57-meter jump and qualified.

Noble and Miles returned for the women’s triple jump and finished first and third respectively. Noble won with an 11.42-meter jump, and Miles was just behind with an 11.32-meter jump. Noble’s jump hit the B-standard for nationals. Walker came back as well to compete in the regular women’s high jump and matched her 1.68-meter jump in the pentathlon to take the event and automatically qualify.

Freshman Nathan Baldwin won second in the men’s shot put with a throw of 15.38 meters. Junior Abigail Gerber won second in the women’s version with an automatically qualifying throw of 13.94 meters.

The weight throw event was full of qualifying athletes. The top six throwers of the women’s event all took an automatically qualifying throw. Junior Abi Wohlgemuth won the event with a 17.94-meter throw. Gerber (fifth) and senior Kamryn Pokorney (sixth) qualified with a 16.42-meter throw and a 16.35-meter throw respectively. Senior Chris Wren only threw automatic qualifying throws and ended up winning the men’s weight throw with 19.63 meters. Junior Austen Rozelle won third in the event with a throw of 17.18 meters.

After an incredibly successful first showing for the Bulldogs, the team will take a break till the new year with the University of Nebraska – Lincoln Graduate Classic on Jan. 12-13 held in Lincoln and the Scott Nisely Memorial Classic held in Crete.