Another Week of Constant Improvement for Men’s Track & Field

2/6/2021 8:05:00 PM | By: Garrett Siegel, Staff Writer

ALLIANCE, Ohio -- Today, if you looked at the big picture of the Blue Streaks coming in third out of four teams, you would not see the importance and improvement that was made across the board today by the John Carroll University Men's Track & Field team. The Blue Streaks had 18 new personal records set, most of those accomplished by experienced athletes running their first race in new events.

JCU had 11 athletes run the mile. It was the first time running the event for 10 of those men. Ian Pierson, the lone athlete with college experience in the event, finished in first. Including Pierson, JCU had seven of the top eight runners. Alex Phillip and Jamie Dailey finished second and third, Pat White finished fifth, Joe Backus finished sixth, Gabe Ernest finished seventh, and Caleb Correia finished eighth. Two of the other distance runners who did not run the mile, Jared Arnold (1000m), and Andrew Miner (5k), won their events as well.

For about three years, Deven Ward has been the headliner of the sprints for JCU. Today, Garrett Clark showed he is capable of making it a two-headed monster, winning both the 60m and 200m dashes. In the 60m, Clark's 6.96 time was just 0.05 seconds away from the school record of 6.91 held by Hayden Snow. Ward finished third in the 60m dash, but won the long jump, his first time in the event this season.

In the field events, young faces continue to flourish. Zach Szafarski set a PR in the Shot Put two weeks in a row, and won the event today as well. James Kartsonas tried the Triple Jump for the first time in his college career and finished second. Finally, Willis Goodwin, a junior who joined the team last season but struggled to break the ranks, got his shot in the Long Jump and Triple Jump today. He finished third in the Triple Jump and fourth in the Long Jump, in his first competition for JCU.

At the end of the meet, JCU was able to get nine more points as a 4x400m relay team of Mark Zahren, Gabe Ernest, James Mangan, and Caleb Correia ran a time of 3:37.57. The team finished with 133 points and finished third.

Next week, on Sunday February 14, the OAC is running split squad meets. The sprinters and jumpers will be at Capital University, and the distance runners and throwers will be at Otterbein University. This will be the first event of the season where all OAC teams will have athletes in the same place. Follow along with @jcusports on Twitter and jcusports.com for updates.

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