With a new personal and school record, senior Kajsa Johansson won the 200-meter dash by a comfortable margin. Her winning time of 24.03 seconds beat the second-place time of 24.35 seconds.
Johansson finished off her season's trend of consistent progress at the perfect time. In nearly each 200m race this year she shaved at least a tenth of a second off her time, and now she's the first individual national champion in the Charger track and field program since Emily Oren in 2016. To win the title, she also finished ahead of top-seed and favorite Nicole Sreenan of Grand Valley St. head to head on the track in the second heat.
Johansson also teamed with freshman Shura Ermakov, sophomore Dakota Stamm and junior Alanna O'Leary to set another school record and earn another All-American honor, as Hillsdale's 4x400m relay earned runner-up honors with a new school-record time of 3:47.45. Hillsdale's team nearly won the national title, taking first in the third and final heat, but Colorado Mesa University managed to edge out the Chargers with a time of 3:47.09 in the second heat.
Ermakov led off for the Chargers, followed by Stamm who ran a personal best split to give the Chargers back the lead. She handed off to O'Leary who remained consistent and set Johansson up well for a strong finish to win the heat. This was the first All-American title for three of the Chargers and Johansson's second.
Joining those four as All-Americans is senior Maryssa Depies, who finished eighth in the mile to earn her first All-American honor. After a huge PR in yesterday's prelim race, she came back to finish today in 4:57.82, still the third fastest time of her career.
Depies battled through much of the race in the middle of the pack. By the halfway mark the entire field was within one second of one another. With 400 meters to go, things began to thin out and Depies finished with all she had. Her final lap was by far her fastest, proving her strength and endurance.
All those finishes helped Hillsdale's women's team finish 10th as a team in Division II in the final standings this weekend. It's the 12th top 10 finish for the Chargers at the NCAA Division II National Championships -- including nine in the last 10 years, as Hillsdale continues to be one of the top women's programs in the nation.
On the men's side, junior Ben Raffin earned an All-American title as well in his first trip to the national meet. His mark of 4.97 meters was high enough to earn him a seventh-place finish.
Raffin scratched his first attempt but bounced back to clear 4.82 meters on his second try. Gaining confidence, he cleared his first attempt on the 4.97-meter mark with ease, and then just missed the 5.07-meter mark, which would have been a PR for him by 6 centimeters.
Hillsdale now turns its focus to the outdoor season, where many of these same Chargers will have a good shot at returning to the national meet and earning further All-Conference recognition this spring.
Friday
After the first day of prelims at the NCAA Division II National Championship meet, two Chargers will be moving on to the finals tomorrow evening.
Senior Maryssa Depies surprised her competitors with an excellent race in the mile. Coming in as the No. 13 seed, she finished eighth with a personal best time of 4:53.73. She will race in the final tomorrow at 2 p.m. CST.
In the sprints, senior Kajsa Johansson competed in the 60- and 200-meter dashes. In the 60m, she finished 10th in 7.61 seconds. Less than an hour later she bounced back to win the 200m in a personal best time of 24.13 seconds. She will enter tomorrow's 200m final as the No. 1 seed.
Johansson will race at 6:50 p.m. CST in the 200m before joining her teammates in the 4x400m relay at 7:20 p.m.
During her first trip to the national meet, junior Nikita Maines took 11th in shot put with a mark of 13.21 meters.
Also for the first time on the national stage, fellow junior Ben Raffin will compete in pole vault tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. CST.
Written by Calli Townsend