The future is bright for the Hillsdale College men's track and field team.
The Chargers battled to a fourth-place finish in a tight race with 84 points at the G-MAC indoor track and field championship meet on Friday and Saturday, with freshman and sophomores posting the top finishes for Hillsdale in the meet.
Hillsdale's lone individual conference title came from its 4x400 meter relay team of freshmen Jamahl Burke and Sean Fagan and sophomores Benu Meintjes and Ian Calvert, who won the race in 3:21.20 to end the meet on a high note for the Chargers.
It was part of a huge day for Burke, who earned G-MAC Male Freshman Athlete of the Meet honors for his performance. The native of Bridgetown, Barbados took second in the 400 meter dash in a close race with multi-year champion Xavier Marable of Findlay, finishing in 48.82, and also took fourth for the Chargers in the 200m dash (22.37).
Burke just barely edged out his teammate, Fagan, for the freshman of the year award. Fagan took second in the 60m hurdles (8.19) himself and was fifth in the 400m dash (49.74) as well for the Chargers.
Hillsdale had four placers in the 400m dash with Meintjes taking fourth (49.62) and Adam Wade seventh (51.26) as well for the the Chargers, and Hillsdale also placed four in the 800m dash, with Calvert finishing second (1:57.55), sophomore Dylan Palmer taking third (1:57.77), senior Mark Miller finishing fourth (1:57.99) and freshman Micah Vanderkooi finishing eighth (1:59.51).
Miller also took fifth in the mile (4:28.56) to place in two events in his final G-MAC indoor meet, and on Friday night, junior Adam Wier took seventh in the 5,000m run (15:18.50) and the Chargers' team of Aidan Murtagh, Joseph Ritzer, Jon-Luke Hawk and Isaac Waffle took seventh in the distance medley relay (11:25.83) as well.
In the field events, junior Ben Raffin posted a career-best of 5.01m in the pole vault to take third overall. Raffin is currently ranked ninth in the nation in Division II in the pole vault and looking to make the Division II national meet for the first time in his career.
Also for the Chargers, freshman Joshua Nichols took fourth in the triple jump with a personal best of 13.72 meters and sophmore Charlie Andrews finished sixth in the high jump with a personal best of 1.92 meters as well.
The Hillsdale men now await the announcement of the NCAA Division II National Meet field. The event is scheduled to take place on March 12-13 in Birmingham, Alabama and the Chargers hope to be sending multiple qualifiers who will compete for All-American honors two weeks from now.
Photo by Scott Huck, Cedarville Athletics