Welcome Back!

The last weekend in January marks the end of winter term; where we welcome student/athletes back from projects and trips.  And we finally have the entire team back together.  It's also the same weekend that our conference hosts its relay carnival.  While it's a little different than the traditional meet lineup, the relay format puts a big emphasis on the idea of a track "TEAM".  And it's a great way for everyone to shake the rust off in preparation for a big indoor season.  Based on our early results, we're confident that this could be the best men's team in the history of Oberlin track.  On the women's side, we lost a fantastic group of seniors to graduation last year, but the women's team is still extremely talented.  In fact, they have the potential to score more points than they ever have at the conference championship.  

Highlights of the meet included three school records for our men's team.  Connor Doss set his second school record in as many weeks.  Fresh off an 8:51 in the 3k at Baldwin-Wallace, Connor finished 5th in the 5k in 15:19.20.  Our men's 4x200 team of Edwin Takahashi, Solomon Turner, Shawn Chrapczynski and Seth Wimberly also set a new school record, running 1:32.95. Finally, our men's DMR team of Ryan King, Thomas Shaw, Albert Davila and Stephen Williams broke our school record and took third overall.  

Our women's team fared extremely well too, with victories by Ali Gemma in the long jump, the DMR team of Nicky Ouellet, Anna Frackman, Kathleen Cann and Joanna Johnson, and the 4x800 team of Nicky Ouellet, Hillary Tipton, Kathleen Cann and Marissa Kennedy. 

We're especially excited for our seniors: Edwin, Connor, Ryan, Nicky and Ali.  Over the past several years, it's really been a joy to watch them advance their fitness and learn how to compete at the collegiate level.  They came in as 12-second 100m runner, a 4:42 miler, a 4:30 miler, a 5:25 miler/19:36 5k'er and 14-second 100m runner, respectively.  Their development into some of the best runners in the conference (and potentially national-qualifiers, in several cases) is a testament to a lot of great things about them and their team.  By  no means are they done yet!  They've got a lot of fast times, and hopefully some more victories ahead of them.  

We can't get too comfortable though, as we're back in action this Friday.  Our second home meet, The Crimson & Gold Invitational, will bring some great competition to campus.  It'll be a chance to show off all the hard work we've been doing.  Check back early next week for results.  We will also have some recaps of how Oberlin Runners spent winter term in the very near future.