MONMOUTH, Ill. — After the first day of competition at the Midwest Conference Track and Field Championships hosted by Monmouth College, the Knox College men's team had earned 16 points. Half of those points came courtesy of junior Lance Miller, who shattered his own school record in the 5000 meter race while finishing second overall.
Miller, who also owns program records in the mile and 3000 meters, ran neck-and-neck with Cornell College's Isaac vanWestrienen for nearly the entire race and was in the lead nearing the halfway mark. With 1000 meters remaining, however, vanWestrienen pulled ahead by about two and a half seconds and eventually claimed the gold with a time of 15:01.547. Miller was about five seconds behind at 15:06.687, more than 17 seconds faster than his previous record, while Ripon's Matt Seeber finished third in 15:08.504.
Senior A.J. Vazquez took a leap forward in the long jump, setting a personal record with a jump of 6.56 meters (21 feet 6.25 inches), more than 15 inches than his previous best. That distance left him in fifth place at the meet, good for four points for the Prairie Fire, and put him fourth on Knox's all-time performer list.
The two Prairie Fire relay teams both finished seventh in their respective events, each garnering two points. First, the sprint medley relay team of Taro Tsukahara, Shuho Okuyama, Arito Nakamichi and Chasyn Pollard ran the race in 4:05.28. In the last event of the day, the quartet of Jayvon Bolds, Jacob Anderson, Eusebio King-Mills and Chrisangel Djambazian completed the 4x200 meter relay in 1:33.30, which also moved them into sixth on the Knox all-time performer list.
The preliminaries of the men's and women's 60 meter race and 60 meter hurdles were run today. Anderson qualified for the finals of the men's 60 meter hurdles with a time of nine seconds flat, good for eighth overall and a personal record that bumped him up from seventh into sixth on the Prairie Fire performer list.
Bolds narrowly missed out on the men's 60 meter finals, placing ninth while matching his personal best of 7.12 seconds.
On the women's side, senior Franny Hilliard and first-year Zoe Thunhurst set personal records and finished 12th in their respective events. Hilliard ran the mile in 5:35.05, less than two seconds shy of the school record, and Thunhurst threw the shot put 9.96 meters (32 feet 8.25 inches).
Heading into the second and final day of the championships, the Ripon men have a nine-point lead over Cornell College, 60-51, while the Grinnell women have the lead in front of the host Fighting Scots, 55-46.
The action will finish tomorrow with the field events — men's and women's weight throw, men's and women's triple jump, and the women's high jump and pole vault — starting at 10:30 a.m.
