NORTHFIELD, Minn. – Senior
Will Kelly completed a sweep of the 3,000-meter run and 5,000-meter run titles as the St. Olaf College men's track and field team finished third after the final day of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Indoor Track & Field Championships on Saturday at Tostrud Center.
After winning the 5,000-meter run the night before, Kelly completed the double with a wire-to-wire victory in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 8:20.32. The senior, who was the conference runner-up in both events a year ago, became the first Ole to complete the 3K/5K conference double and is just the second men's runner to do so since 2011 (Matthew Wilkinson of Carleton College in 2020).
Kelly's performance was one of three All-MIAC showings for St. Olaf on the final day of the meet as the Oles placed third out of 11 teams with 107 points. The third-place finish was the third in a row for St. Olaf, matching the program's highest finish since 2017. Bethel University won the team title with 164 points and was followed by Saint John's University in second with 143 points. The jumped ahead of the College of St. Scholastica after earning 25 points in the 3,000-meter run in the second-to-last event of the meet.
Sophomore
Kevin Turlington was the runner-up to Kelly in the 3K with a nearly nine-second PR of 8:31.97 to earn his first individual All-MIAC accolade in track and field. Turlington's time saw him move onto St. Olaf's all-time top-10 list in the event in ninth place.
Like Turlington, sophomore
Ignatius Fitzgerald collected his first All-MIAC accolade on the track with a third-place performance in the 1,000-meter run, clocking in at 2:31.39 to finish just over a second off the winning pace.
St. Olaf added three Honorable Mention All-MIAC results on the final day of the meet. Junior
Andrew Cogley, who was sixth in the heptathlon on Thursday and Friday, jumped to a fifth-place finish in the high jump by clearing 1.87 meters (6' 1 ½"), which was a personal-best clearance.
Seniors
Ian Curtis and
David Lynn contributed to the Oles' 25-point haul in the 3,000-meter run by finishing fifth (8:33.02) and sixth (8:34.58), respectively. The sixth-place finish was the highest of Lynn's career at a MIAC Championship event.
St. Olaf will send a group of competitors to the Wartburg Final Qualifier in Waverly, Iowa on Saturday, March 2 in their final attempts to qualify for the NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championships.
