Last week, in preparation for the Presidents’ Athletic Championships, the Waynesburg University track & field teams traveled to Bethany College for the Bethany Mini-Meet. The men’s team finished third out of seven teams that competed.

With the meet coming less than a week before the PAC Championships, head coach Michelle Cross was satisfied with the team’s performance considering the goal was just to get a competitive meet in while staying relaxed.

“We did [the meet] as a final tune-up and had some events that were in there just for fun,” said Cross. “We also gave a couple people some final [events] hoping to get their seed times down a little more.”

Senior Mitch Kendra continued his success this season by placing first in the pole vault, passing at distance of 4.25 meters.

Cross was excited to see a handful of underclassmen, including a few freshmen, have some of their best events since starting their college careers this season. According to Cross, freshman Kyle Warmbein ran one of his best 5k’s of the year, while sophomore Michael Trax set a personal best in the long jump.

Another freshman, Matt Mansfield, took second place in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 10:23. Sophomore Ryan VanTine also earned a second-place finish in the javelin and a fourth in the shot put, with a throw of 13.50 meters.

“Both [Mansfield] and [VanTine] pulled down their placement times in the conference and jumped up in placing because they both had very good performances.” Cross said.

The young success continued with freshman Matt Durgin also claiming a second place finish with a time of 17:39 in the 5,000-meter race.

The event served as a relaxed tune-up, which according to Cross, was a good thing considering the mini-meets are usually 10, or more, days away from the championships, but this year they were just one week out from the start of PACs.

“It felt more like an inter-squad meet or something that you do to focus on fun more than anything else,” said Cross. “Obviously, there were a couple of good things but for the most part it was something to relax them before the big meet.”

Due to conference championships approaching, Cross didn’t make the meet mandatory. This decision allowed for Cross and the team to have some fun and experiment with entering a new combination of runners or two into a race. Cross said that of the 60 members of the team, only 30 showed up.

“It was a very small event,” Cross said. “I specifically told them if they had a class conflict that I would rather have them go, because this week we’re asking them to miss class again [for PAC Championships]. A lot of this was just for fun and at the meet we made a last second decision to run our 4×4 team in the 4×8. So that was a goofy experience event.”