Warriors Set New Records!
By: Cassidy Warson
Brookings, S.D. – On Friday, January 20th, the Warriors traveled to the South Dakota State Invitational Division II indoor track meet and came back with seven broken school records.
In field events, Gabriel Antonio, threw shot put 12.71 meters and beat the school-record by .20 meters
To begin the day, Waldorf senior, Nathan Meiners, blew his previous indoor school-record away by a time of 19 seconds in the 5000-meter run, giving him an ending time of 16 minutes, 12 seconds.
“To be honest, I looked at the clock once,” said Meiners. “I didn’t know I was going to smash the record during the race, I just ran fast and got my end result.”
When asked about what made him run as fast as he did, Meiners said, “At the race my former team, Iowa Central was there so I had my former coaches yelling times and cheering me on throughout the race. What also pushed me was the competition that I was racing against.”
Sophomore, Justin Jacobi, made a time of 41 minutes, 53 seconds and making a school record in the 300-meter hurdles, winning his heat and placing second overall.
Sophomore, Mark Ahlers, also broke his previous indoor record in the 800-meter race, running a time of one minute, 59 seconds and cut .35 seconds off his previous time.
Nic Ganzeveld came in running his two races and breaking both of the indoor school-records in the mile and the 1,000-meter run. In the mile, Ganzeveld knocked the record off by a time of 3.04 seconds, giving him a time of four minutes, 32 second and a 14th place finish. Later in the 1,000-meter race, Ganzeveld came in first in his heat and finished 10th overall with a time of 2 minutes, 43 seconds shaving the time by 2.72 seconds.
When asked about how he feels to own not one, but two indoor records, Ganzeveld said, “It is kind of bitter sweet. Having school records are amazing, but the fact that I have them is not so amazing because there are people on this team that worked a lot harder than me over break as well as doing all the extra stuff to be better. All I have is natural talent but my teammates are the real ones that deserve the records.”
To round out Friday, the last record to be broke came from Jonah Remker in the 400-meter dash by .65 seconds, running a time of 53 seconds.
Coach Nathan Christianson had this to reflect on how he felt the day went, “I was really impressed with Mark. I was impressed with his 800 time from the time before running the mile and the 4×4 at the last meet. Overall, I was very impressed with all the sprinters.”
Next week, Waldorf travels to Storm Lake in the Dennis Young Classic in hopes for more indoor school-breaking records, but even more hopes to get some national qualifiers.