Bourbonnais, Ill. -- After beginning their 2023-24 seasons in early December, the Thunder track & field teams took part in their first event of the new year on Friday evening by traveling to the Olivet Nazarene University Invite. No team scores were kept at the 21-school competition, but there were multiple standout individual performances for Wheaton tonight, as well as a relay team victory by a Thunder quartet.
Sam Elsen led the way for the Wheaton men, as the junior won the 57-runner 800m race to claim the lone solo victory for the Thunder on Friday. Elsen registered a time of 1:58.29 as one of only two runners to complete the event in under two minutes. Teammate
Jonathan Logan was close behind, earning a fifth-place finish in the same event.
Eli Odell secured a top-five placement of his own in the men's 400m via a time of 51.74 seconds, only .3 seconds behind the winning runner.
Isaiah Clausen and
Jediah Giller then went back-to-back in the 60m hurdles competition by placing second and third, respectively.
Nathan Gibson earned a solid fourth-place finish in the 39-competitor 3000m run, before Clausen picked up his second top-three placement of the night in the long jump competition.
Emmanuel Wang helped himself to third place in the men's triple jump to continue the bright start to his collegiate career.
Jaden Pankau notched a personal-best distance of 13.54m in the shot put to place sixth in the 39-thrower field.
The men's 4x400 meter relay saw the Wheaton combination of
Ethan Zerbe, Giller,
Aaron Connors, and Elsen run to a third-place showing in the 13-team field, posting a combined time mark of 3:33.78.
A Thunder women's grouping triumphed in the 4x400 meter relay tonight, as Holly Brown teamed up with Sadie Richert, Olivia Kiddy, and Crystelle VanWingerden to top the six-team field with a combined time of 4:17.43, edging out the second-placed ONU quartet by only .11 second.
Brown then earned a solo third-place standing in her 60m hurdles competition with a personal-record 10.16 time. Natalie Conrad joined Brown with a third-place finish in her one-mile run, posting a time of 5:48.41 to complete the event before 35 other competitors. Kiddy posted a fourth-place finish in the 18-woman 600m race.
Laura Prothero came in fifth in the 800m event ahead of 33 fellow runners, and she was matched in this placement by VanWingerden in the sizable women's 200m competition. Destiny Rogers and Louisa Brorson went third and fourth, respectively, in the 3000m run, finishing the event in just over 11 minutes. Grace Crowder notched another third-place showing for the Wheaton women in the high jump category on Friday.
The Wheaton squads will return to competition next Friday and Saturday when they head to Kenosha for Carthage College's Tadd Metzger Invite.
