It was a warm Saturday in  Southern California on April 11, as the California Lutheran University track and field team competed against four other schools in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference dual meet at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.

The Kingsmen and Regals achieved success over three out of the four teams competing at the meet.

Cal Lutheran beat Caltech, Whittier and Chapman on both the men’s and the women’s sides but lost to Claremont-Mudd-Scripps by 46 points on the men’s team and 71 points on the women’s side, according to clusports.com. 

“Everyone was feeling healthy. It was amazing to watch. It made me want to run fast, but I don’t run. I throw and the throwers did really well too,” said sophomore Cody Jones, who competes in the javelin event.

Cal Lutheran saw wins and personal records from athletes on both teams. 

On the men’s side, Trevor Wood set a personal record of 15.07 seconds competing in the 110m hurdles event, putting him in first place.

In the distance events, senior Garrett Baker also achieved a new personal record of 4:00.09 minutes in the 1500m event.

Junior Ronny Camacho won his heat in the 100m with a time of 10.86 seconds. Senior teammate Conor Finfrock competed in the heat before coming in just one hundredth of a second slower with a heat-winning time of 10.87 seconds. Finfrock also won the 200m with a time of 21.99 seconds, and teammate Eric Daniel came in third.

In the relay events, the men’s 4x100m team took first place at the meet with a time of 42.18 seconds.

Finfrock is confident in the Kingsmen’s potential for success in the coming weeks.

“I think that if there’s something to take away from yesterday’s meet it’s that as a team, especially on the men’s side, we are really hitting our stride right now, which is perfect. There’s still five weeks in the season for most of us and I think that we will be hitting our peak at the right time,” Finfrock said.

On the women’s side, there were four athletes who won their events. Melissa Skiba in the 1500m event, Kendahl Waalk in the 5000m, Julia Teitzel in the high-jump, and Allie Hadley in the javelin.

The Regals were missing some of their point contributors including Anna Schlosser and team captain Amanda Hamilton.

 “We knew it was going to be tough to beat [Claremont-Mudd-Scripps] since we were down a few girls. But every girl knew that you can only control the controlables, which means you can’t control anyone else’s performance besides your own,” said Hadley in an email interview. “With that thought in the back our minds, my expectations were met and then some.”

Cal Lutheran’s women’s team also had several athletes achieve times that qualified them for the top-10 performances in Cal Lutheran’s history.

Savannah Sipes had a career best time of 1:05.46 in the 400m hurdles event and a season-best 15.66 in the 100m hurdles event, allowing her to enter into the university’s top 10 list in these events.

Mary Case also achieved a personal record in the pole vault event, clearing 3.35m, good enough for second all-time at Cal Lutheran.

The next meet the track and field athletes will compete in is the Bryan Clay Invitational on April 17 at Azusa Pacific University, unless they have qualified for the Mt. Sac relays which will be April 16-18.

“Preparation will be no different for this meet as for any other. We head into the week focused and ready to work hard. As long as we stay consistent with that mindset, then that is all the preparation we need,” Hadley said in an email interview.   

“All athletes have been working hard during the week, and it paid off this weekend with a ton of PRs, and it will continue to pay off as we go into SCIAC [championships],” Jones said. “It’s getting more and more exciting. It’s more and more fun, and there’s more and more pay off.”

Samantha Chittenden
Staff Writer
Published April 15th, 2015