NORTHFIELD, Minn. – The St. Olaf College men's track and field team posted a runner-up team finish at the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Indoor Track & Field Championships held Thursday through Saturday at Carleton College's Recreation Center.
St. Olaf took second in the 11-team field for the second season in a row by compiling 14 points over the three-day meet, finishing 22 points behind Bethel University and 37 ahead of Saint John's University. The second-place finish tied the best finish in program history for the Oles.
Over the three-day meet, St. Olaf had four individual MIAC champions, one MIAC champion relay, nine All-MIAC individual finishes and two All-MIAC relays (top three), and 10 individual Honorable Mention All-MIAC performances plus one honorable-mention relay. The Oles also recorded 10 performances that ranked on the program's all-time performers list and 10 that fell on the all-time performances list.
FRIDAY RECAP
Senior
Cullen Moore, senior
Kevin Turlington, junior
Max Albertson, and St. Olaf's distance medley relay of sophomore
Jackson Bullock, first year
Aidan McKeever, sophomore
Austin McInturff, and sophomore
Garrett Seppanen all won events on Friday. The four first-place finishes helped the Oles earn 87 points in the team standings to open up a 13-point lead over Bethel.
Moore led a 1-2-3-4-8 finish for St. Olaf in the 800-meter run that gave the Oles 30 points in the team standings. Moore, who was the runner-up in the event two years ago, won the event in 1:53.05, edging Nemecek by one one-hundredth of a second at the line for the title to become the first Ole to win the event since 2006. Junior
Christian Fells took third (1:53.84) and first year
Paxon Myers was fourth (1:54.62) to round out the top-four sweep, while first year
Trigg Heimdal also scored in eighth (1:57.25).
After finishing as the runner-up in the event last season, Turlington eased to the win late in the 5,000-meter run in 15:03.46, as four Oles scored a total of 19 points in the event. Senior
Gael Manzur Strandlund placed fourth (15:08.70), senior
Jonathan Pattie was sixth (15:18.60), and junior
Quinn McCabe was eighth (15:24.30).
Bullock, McKeever, McInturff, and Seppanen posted a facility record of 10:15.94 in the distance medley relay to win the relay by nearly four seconds. Albertson repeated as the MIAC indoor champion in the long jump, sharing the title with Nick Bovitz of Bethel with a mark of 7.02 meters (23' ½"). Sophomore
Rik Cumps added a fifth-place finish in the long jump with a personal-best mark of 6.76 meters (22' 2 ¼") to move into ninth on the Oles' all-timer performers' list.
Bullock shaved over three seconds off his personal-best time in the one-mile run in his third-place finish (4:13.61), while junior
Alex Bjork joined him in the top five in fifth (4:18.09). Sophomore
Gavin Vogel, sophomore
Jakob Eenigenburg, first year Abe Polzein, and Albertson sprinted to a fourth-place showing in the 4x200-meter relay (1:31.66) with the No. 4 time in program history.
SATURDAY RECAP
Turlington completed the 3K/5K double by winning the 3,000-meter run (8:16.34) for St. Olaf's lone first-place finish on the final day of the meet. Bethel leapfrogged the Oles on the strength of getting 59 points from its sprint group to win its fourth consecutive MIAC team title.
Turlington joined Will Kelly '24 as the lone Oles to win the 3,000-meter run and 5,000-meter run in the same season while becoming the fifth St. Olaf runner to win the 3K at the MIAC indoor meet, doing so with the No. 4 time on St. Olaf's all-time performers list. The senior's converted time of 8:10.64 currently ranks No. 21 in NCAA Division III this season, positioning Turlington to potentially compete in both the long-distance events at the national meet.
St. Olaf's 4x400-meter relay of Nemecek, McInturff, Moore, and Myers finished as the runner-up in 3:21.95, which is the No. 6 performance in program history. Myers, McInturff, and Nemecek were three of the four Oles to score in the 600-meter run, highlighted by Myers' third-place finish in a program-record time of 1:21.27, which broke the previous mark of 1:21.52 set by Kevin Skrip '16 in 2016.
McInturff logged the No. 4 time on both program lists in his fifth-place performance (1:21.59), while Nemecek was just being in sixth (1:22.17). Sophomore
Aaron Ruesink rounded out the 15-point event for the Oles in seventh (1:22.50) to jump into seventh on St. Olaf's performers list.
Moore added an all-conference finish in the 1,000-meter run by taking third (2:27.85) with the No. 3 time on both all-time lists. Sophomores
Jackson Bullock (5th, 2:30.70) and
Micah Larsen-Schmidt (6th, 2:32.99) also earned the Oles points in the event.
Bjork joined Turlington in the top four in the 3,000-meter run in fourth (8:39.54), while sophomore
Cristian Escobar Pearson was fourth in the 55-meter dash (6.56).
St. Olaf will send athletes to the Wartburg Last Chance Meet and/or UW-La Crosse Final Qualifier this coming weekend in their final attempts to qualify for the NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championships.
