Women’s track and field wins 10th consecutive GPAC championship

Sophomore Adrianna Rodencal competes in the hurdles event, in which she won second place. 

Photo credit: Courtney Wright (photo from previous event)

By Isaac Dawson

The Concordia Track and Field team competed at the Great Plains Athletic Conference Indoor Championships this weekend. The women’s team dominated the competition for their 10th consecutive championship win while the boys took third place, being beaten out by Doane University (first) and Dordt University (second).

The team took a total of nine gold, eight silver, and nine bronze medals for the day, with one new qualifier for the Nationals meet held at the end of the month.

In the track portion of the event, the first medals were taken home by freshmen Caleb Schlichting and Luke Hammang, who got second and third respectively in the 3000-meter race walk with times of 17:30.52 and 18.05.80.

The men and women both did well in the one-mile run, senior Calvin Rhode narrowly missing out on first place for the men with a time of 4:14.65, with seniors Kylahn Freiburg (5:03.34) and Rylee Haecker (5:06.72) pushing each other into a second and third place combo for the women.

Juniors Jordan Koepke and Trinity Tuls crushed the 400-meter dash, both breaking the one-minute mark at 58.86 and 59.05. Tuls finished almost neck-and-neck with a runner from Northwestern, losing out on second place by three hundredths of a second while Koepke took first.

Junior Jenna Esch was the sole medalist for the 600/800-meter mid-distance races, cruising past the competition with a 1:35.57 for the 600 and 2:18.68 for the 800, achieving 20 points for the team in those two events alone with a first place in each.

The 60-meter hurdles went well for the women, Rodencal back with a vengeance to take second place in the main event (8.56) as well as third place in the 200-meter dash not long afterwards (25.85). She also got third place in the 60-meter dash (7.85).

Concordia got first place in the 1000-meter run in both the women’s and men’s events, with distance extraordinaries Haecker and Rhode crushing the competition with Haecker’s 2:59.10 for the women and Rhode’s 2:34.93 for the men.

Freiburg made a reappearance in the women’s 3000-meter run, finishing in 10:05.72 for a new school record and getting second place in the race itself.

The women’s 4×400-meter relay of runners Esch, sophomore Kayla Kirchner, Tuls and Koepke took first place with a total time of 3:59.23.

In the field events, senior Chris Wren (19.86 meters) and junior Abi Wohlgemuth (17.29 meters) got first and third place in the weight throw, with junior Darien Semedo (17.36) getting sixth with a distance far enough to qualify for the national meet.

Junior Zach Zohner (5.21 meters) and sophomore Mayson Ostermeyer (4.65 meters) got first and second place in the men’s pole vault, and Amira Cummings (3.57 meters) got third place in the women’s.

Freshman Zoey Walker took the gold in the women’s high jump at 1.65 meters.

In the shot put, junior Abigail Gerber and Semedo each got third place, Gerber throwing for 13.64 meters and Semedo for 15.81 meters.

Junior Faith Espinosa and Walker got second and third in the women’s pentathlon with 3042 and 3004 points respectively.

The overall team results for the GPAC championships were third place for the men at 95.66 points and the women taking first place with a whopping 206 points, more than doubling the third-place team to win their 10th GPAC championship in a row!