Between the men and women, the MSU Running Club has 37 indoor track & field records. This past weekend at the Happy Valley Invitational, club members decided to take a certain Ke$ha song to heart and take down 15 of those records. Unfortunately, Ryan Squanda was not there to yell "Timber!"

 

     The women's DMR started off the meet on a high note with an impressive victory. Steph Schmidt established a solid lead in the 1200m, with Kathryn Dugal and Megan McNittmaintaining in their 400m and 800m legs. Valerie Morel started off with a slight lead, relinquished it in the middle, and stole it back in the last lap to edge out Penn State XC. Ben Lambert, Tom Eby, Lucas Bowman, and Alex Miros took 4th in the men's race. Both teams were within a second of breaking the club records.

 

     In the 60m Hurdles, Olivia Spagnuolo and Jared Emerson took 3rd (12.41) and 4th (9.30) respectively for new club records.

 

     Zina Laliza finished 3rd in the 60m Dash (9.44), while Jared returned to run 7.46, also both club records.

 

     Steph led from the wire in the Mile to just win in 5:25. Christina Casali ran a solid 5:40 for 3rd and Megan McNitt finished in 6:03. On the men's race dominated by MRun, Colin Riley broke the club record with a 4:33, with Adam Terwillegar not far behind in 4:36. Ben ran a 4:54 in his mile opener of the year.

 

     Aliza Weiss ran 81.5 in the women's 400m. On the men's side, Andrew Crechiolo broke the existing club record by 4 seconds to go 51.7. Jared also fared well, running 53.7.

 

     Val had another great race in the 800m, just coming short of the victory with a new club record of 2:31. Christina was 5th in 2:34.

 

     In the 200m, Olivia ran 31.34 for her second record of the day. Aliza ran 35.62. The heats of the men's 200m were exciting for MSU, with 3 Spartans resetting the club record in 3 consecutive heats. First, Andrew ran 23.96. In the next heat, Tom went 23.76. Finally, Jared settled the score in 23.62. Talk about some sprinter depth!

 

     Steph finished up her hat trick of the distance events with a tactical win in the 3000m, running 10:35 and obliterating the old record by 17 seconds. Kathryn ran 12:44 in the same event. On the men's side, Adam broke his own record by 5 seconds, going 9:06 for 4th place. Colin placed 6th in 9:12. Alex had a great win in his heat, throwing down a strong last 200m to win in 9:30. Lucas and Jonathan Sollish highlighted their heat with crowd-pleasing antics, kicking a lap early and finishing in 10:41 and 10:57 respectively.

 

     In the 4x400m, the Spartan women (Christina, Megan, Kathryn, Val) beat MRun once again, also breaking the club record set at SVSU by 5 seconds (4:39). Steph, Zina, Aliza, and Olivia ran 4:58 for 4th. The men's A team of Jared, Tom, Ben, and Andrew won their heat in 3:40, finishing 2 seconds behind MRun's time from the next heat. The B Team of Adam, Alex, Lucas, and Colin, all fresh from the 3k, ran 4:10.

 

     Not to be forgotten, the field events went quite well for MSU. Showing off her decathlete background, Zina established club records in the Long Jump (3.98m) and Triple Jump (8.73m). In the men's Shot Put, Andrew threw 9.82m for 4th and Alex Bonnen threw 8.38m.

 

     Though Penn State did not decide to score the meet (which makes no sense since they dominated the team race), I did it myself. Below are the unofficial team scores:

 

Men

Penn State T&F 148

MRun 107

MSU 61

Delaware 40

Penn State XC 39

UConn 17

UPenn 17

Georgetown 7

Pittsburgh 5

 

Women

Penn State T&F 147

MSU 83

MRun 61

UConn 57

Georgetown 31

Penn State XC 11

UPenn 7

Delaware 5

 

2nd and 3rd? Awesome. Let's do it again at Illinois in 2 weeks.

 

Go Green!

 

- Colin Riley, 2/17/14