*Story by David Wahl III
WITTENBERG, Ohio – The Wilmington College men's track & field team left Wittenberg with brand new times and brand new personal bests in a multitude of events. The Wittenberg Invite saw multiple meet records and multiple facility records broken by teams all across the board, including the Quakers.
To no surprise, Simon Heys claimed yet another Wilmington College school record. This time, Heys ran 4:11.93 in the one mile run to take down the previous record set in 2015. This marks the sixth school record snagged by Heys as he owns every school record for Wilmington track & field from the mile to the 10,000-meter run (aside from the 3,000-meter steeplechase). He placed second in the event overall and came back later in the meet to place fifth in the 1,000-meter run in a time of 2:32, just seconds off another school record.
In a slew of personal bests, next on the list was Eric Reynolds, who took sixth place in the 1,000-meter run with a thirteen second lifetime best of 2:36.43. Aidan Henson followed up the event with a lifetime best in the 500-meter dash with a third place time of 1:07.84. To round out the day on the track side, the 4x400 squad of Henson, Josh Cyrus, Anthony Gilmore and Reynolds placed fourth in a season best time of 3:33.34.
As always, the Quaker throws squad took over as they finished 1-4, 8 in weight throw. Led by a 57' 3" first place throw by JJ Durr, the rest followed in suit. Nathan Marcum and Justin Shuga finished right behind Durr with identical personal best throws of 54' 3". Andrew Pacifico came in fourth with a heave of 52' 6" and the last personal best coming from Nathan Borgan with a toss of 51' 5" for eighth place. Blake Jamison led the squad in shot put with a third place mark of 49' 4.25" with Durr taking sixth and Shuga claiming eighth. To wrap up the day for field events, Brady Vilvens jumped his way to third in triple jump with a leap of 41' 3.25".
With this meet being the conclusion of the indoor track regular season, the Quakers head to Mount Union for the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) Indoor Championships on February 25-26 as post-season is underway.
