Owl men and women earn two firsts at Fighting Scots Invite
Kenyon men and women competed at The College of Wooster’s Fighting Scots Invitational indoor track and field meet Saturday, and grabbed two gold medals.
Kenyon College men’s sprinters accounted for more than half of the Owls’ point total at the meet. Overall, Kenyon racked up 58 points and recorded a fifth-place team finish. Led by sophomore Tapiwa Gono Phiri, sprinters were responsible for 37 points for Kenyon. Phiri, himself, had a trio of runner-up finishes and had a hand in 24 team points. He was second in the 60-meter dash (7.12), second in the 200-meter dash (23.33) and ran a leg on the Owls’ second-place 4x200-meter relay team (1:33.70), which also included Emmanuel Makelele, Julius Thompson and Collin Witt. The lone Owl winner was Thompson, who edged Phiri in the 60-meter dash.
The Owl women competed against five teams at the Wooster event and placed sixth. Their lone win was by Paula Soric, who dominated the triple jump. The sophomore scored nearly a fourth of the team’s points when she recorded an 11.31-meter leap, clearing the second-place distance (10.21 meters) by more than a meter. The Owls also added a pair of runner-up finishes, with Anna Brown adding her second second-place finish in as many meets, following a silver spot in the 800-meter race last weekend with the second-fastest time in the 400-meter event this time – in 1:04.24 to add eight points to Kenyon’s total. Grace Neuger also took silver with a second spot in the 60-meter hurdles for the third consecutive event, securing second place with a time of 10.11.
MVNU runners set six school records at Warrior Invite
The Mount Vernon Nazarene University (MVNU) men’s and women's track & field team competed at the Warrior Invite, hosted by the Indiana Institute of Technology on Friday and saw two wins and six track records set by their student-athletes.
The men’s team got gold with the 4x400 relay team of Marcus Whaley, Liam Near, Jaden Haldeman and Eric Rhodeback in a school record time of 3:21.05. Three other school records were set with Rhodeback breaking his own school record in the 60-meter hurdle, while running a time of 8.06 for second place; Near finished third in the 400-meter dash, breaking his school record in a time of 50.34; and Evan Hodkinson hit an NAIA B Standard and set a new school record in the 800 meter, finishing second in 1:56.79.
The women’s team earned a win and set two school records. The team of Ellyn Coe, Lily Scarberry, Jocelyn Dornbirer and Morgan Forney claimed first in the distance medley relay with a time of 13:13.68. In the 400-meter dash, though she did not win, Ashley Burgess ran a time of 1:03.32 to surpass her own previous school record. Lyssi Snouffer was able to beat her own school record in the high jump, clearing a mark of 1.58 meters, while placing fifth out of 20 competitors.
