Apr. 23, 2015Well, this past weekend CU T&F competed at home to sweep the G-MAC Championship. Cedarville's men finished 1st with 228 points, leaving 2nd and 3rd place behind at 127, and 108 points. The weather was perfect, the fans were awesome, and God was glorified! Look at the list below for an impressive list of our Top 5 Finishers:
Top 5 Finishers:- Sturgeon - 1st in Pole Vault
- Thompson - 3rd in Long Jump
- Tvardzik - 2nd in Triple Jump
- Blackwell - 3rd in Javelin
- Ballentine - 4th in Javelin
- Tvardzik - 1st in High Jump
- Bernard - 3rd in High Jump
- Ballentine - 2nd in Hammer Throw
- Adams - 3rd in Hammer Throw
- Adams - 1st in Discus
- Ballentine - 2nd in Discuss
- Dennison - 2nd in 10K
- Thayer - 3rd in 10K
- Michalski - 1st in Steeplechase
- Perez - 4th in Steeplechase
- Watson - 3rd in 1500 Meters
- Bitner - 5th in 1500 Meters
- Blackwell - 2nd in 110 Meter Hurdles
- Bernard - 1st in 400 Meters
- Yoder - 2nd in 400 Meters
- Bird - 3rd in 400 Meters
- Johnson - 4th in 400 Meters
- Klaassen - 2nd in 200 Meters
- De Jong - 1st in 800 Meters
- Dannelly - 2nd in 800 Meters
- Kilgore - 5th in 800 Meters
- Moser - 5th in 400 Meter Hurdles
- Klaassen - 2nd 200 Meters
- Blackwell - 4th 200 Meters
- Cheney - 3rd in 5K
- Shrock - 4th in 5K
- Vega - 5th in 5K
- Yoder, Michalski, De Jong, Bernard - 1st in 4 x 400 Meter Relay
As you can see above, we had Top 5 finishers in most of our events. Its great to see our team compete well but also remember who we are competing for. We focus on the fact that we compete for a Savior, not for a time, or a distance. We recognize that our glory goes to Christ, and not to ourselves. Its awesome to see what happens when people work hard in practice, and then compete well in meets! The team is very thankful for those who encouraged us and showed support by coming out to see us this last weekend at our G-MAC Championship. You all are an encouragement, and we had fun competing with the support of our fans!
Our next meet is May 1st in Rome, Georgia. It is the NCCAA Outdoor Championship. We are excited to see what God does there!
Apr. 16, 2015"Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name goes all the glory..." Psalm 115:1.
The Psalmist had it right when he said that what we do isn't for us. It's all to bring glory to our Father in Heaven. That's something that CU Men's T&F tries to keep in mind every time we run, throw, or jump. We try to remember and focus on the fact that our efforts are not for ourselves. We do our best to compete for the Glory of God, and give Him all the honor, keeping none for ourselves.
The CU Men's T&F team competed at the All-Ohio Championship meet this past weekend. We competed well, finishing 6th in the state of Ohio among Division I and Division II teams. We finished behind teams from - Ohio State, Miami of Ohio, Ashland, Findlay, and Akron.
Top 10 finishers included:Yoder - 6th in 400 meters
Michalski - 3rd in 1,500 meters
Watson - 5th in 5k
Klaassen/Bird - 7th/10th in 200 meters
Vega/Shrock - 8th/10th in 10k
Blackwell - 9th in 110 meter hurdles
Perez - 8th in Steeplechase
Bird, Michalski, De Jong, Bernard - 4th in 4x400 meter relay
Tvardzik, Bernard - tied at 7th in high jump
Thompson - 8th in long jump
Tvarzik - 8th in triple jump
This Saturday is our G-MAC Outdoor Championship meet. It will be held at the Yellow Jacket Track & Field Complex. If you are here and free, come out and support! We are excited to see what God does through us!
Apr. 9, 2015For the track & field team and a few other teams on campus, Easter was an eventful time! Last Saturday was a fun day for CU Track as we competed at Ohio Wesleyan University. A reminder from our coach was that while it is Easter weekend, we should take advantage of the time we have to interact with people who may not know what Christ did for us. He mentioned that it's a great time to be a witness and hopefully a great way to start a conversation with other athletes at the meet. That is something we always try to keep in mind and hopefully we were able to show the love of Christ to those we came in contact with!
One group left school at 7:50 a.m. in the morning, luckily most people were able to leave at 12:15 p.m! We had a ton of great PR's all throughout the team which is always great to see. As the end of the season is near it is great to see that people are improving in their events and getting closer to reaching their potential!
Results (Top 5)Matthew Bird - 4th in the 200 meters
Josiah Bernard - 3rd in the 400 meters
Philip Dannelly - 2nd in the 800 meters
Tim De Jong - 3rd in the 800 meters
Daniel Michalski - 1st in the 1500 meters
Matt Cheney - 1st in the 5K
James Blackwell - 2nd in the 110 meter hurdles
Bernard, Yoder, De Jong, Bird - 1st in 4 x 400 meter relay
Josiah Bernard - 4th in high jump
Philip Thompson - 4th in long jump
Our team came in 3rd place behind Ohio Wesleyan and Ohio Northern University. This coming weekend the team has the chance to compete at the All-Ohio Championship meet. It's a great competition with athletes from Division I and Division II schools. Last year our team had some great performances, and we are excited to work hard this week and compete well again this year.
Thank you for your support throughout this track season, we appreciate it greatly!
Apr. 1, 2015Our men's team came in third-place at our track meet, behind Ohio Northern University and Heidelberg University. Last Saturday was brutal. The meet started early in the morning and if you live in Cedarville, Ohio you probably know that it is constantly freezing outside. The wind does this unique thing where it blows in every single direction yet still isn't considered a tornado. In a sport where you sprint full speed around a track - its not very ideal. It was pretty difficult to work up the desire to run in freezing cold weather with wind blowing in every direction, but our team did well. Our coach told us an old saying, "The weather is the same in every lane of the track... no excuses." and that's what we had to keep in mind all day long!
Top 3 finishers:Matthew Bird - 1st in the 200
Philip Thompson - 1st in Long Jump
Matt Brooker (Cedarville Graduate- unattached) - 1st in the 5K
Bird, Bernard, De Jong, Yoder - 1st in the 4x400
Josiah Bernard - 3rd in the High Jump
Forrest Thayer - 2nd in 1500m
James Blackwell - 1st in 110 Hurdles
Daniel Michalski - 1st in the 800
The team had many other great performances despite the cold weather. Somehow people managed to obtain their new PR's so thats super exciting! We are competing this weekend at Ohio Wesleyan, and will hopefully compete well. Thank you to all of those who came out to support the track team as spectators but also as workers. We appreciate everything you do for us and we hope to be able to support you all in your sports and events!
Mar. 26, 2015Our Cedarville Track & Field teams competed at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia this past weekend. It was an awesome experience and we had a lot of fun getting to do different things besides track!
We left on Wednesday night at 10 p.m. and drove all through the night until we arrived in Atlanta. I don't remember a whole lot about the trip down, but I do know that the ten-hour trip was a long one. I woke to my coach ordering food for himself at McDonald's, I woke up to us parked in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn at 2 a.m. in the morning... It wasn't ours, we were still five hours away. We woke up again for an early breakfast at McDonald's, and then finally the fun began.
We started out by getting to tour Atlanta. That consisted of two hours of "free time" where we could go and do whatever we wanted. The group I was with went to the CNN Center to look around and buy Starbucks. After we ate lunch we went to Stone Mountain. Our coach told us we could climb to the top of the mountain because it's a cool experience and has a great view. Unfortunately, we still haven't seen the view because it was so foggy! We hiked the one mile to the top of the mountain and couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of us. So, that was kind of a fail. Later, we went to the track and everyone had a chance to get a feel for the track, and run through some relay hand-offs.
Friday was the first day of competition. We got to sleep in pretty late which was great, and then were privileged with 70 degree weather for most of the day while people competed. It was glorious, but made it that much harder to come back to the Ohio weather that we all "love." The guys team competed well at the meet despite being exhausted from the ten-hour bus ride and the ultimately pointless mountain hike.
Our athletes who finished in the top five in their events were:4 x 800 Meter Relay - finished 1st (Dannelly, Gerhart, De Jong, Michalski)
Distance Medley Relay - finished 5th (Yoder, Johnson, Reece, Wheeler)
High Jump - Bernard and Tvardzik finished 4th and 5th
1500 Meters - Michalski finished 4th
5K - Watson and Tuttle finished 2nd and 4th
110 Meter Hurdles - Blackwell finished 3rd
Pole Vault - Blackwell finished 1st
(The men's team finished third overall)
This weekend we have a home meet, hope to see you out there supporting the Yellow Jacket Track & Field team!
Mar. 4, 2015Our men's track & field team placed 1st this past weekend at our G-MAC Championship. Our points totaled 183 points, while second place, Central State, scored 98.
The meet was held at Kenyon College. This school had one of the nicest facilities in the U.S. for track & field, so as soon as we got there everyone took the opportunity to explore. It was a really cool bonding experience for the team as we played games and just goofed off as we toured the facilities.
Once the meet started, the fun didn't stop. We had a lot of fun cheering on our team members as they competed, and when it was our turn to compete, they did the same for us! We had a lot of great races and field events.
Recap: (Top 7 scored points)60 Meter Dash - Klaassen 5th
200 Meter Dash - Bird 4th, Meyers 7th
400 Meter Dash - Bernard 1st, Gerhart 2nd, Yoder 3rd, Johnson 4th
60 Meter Hurdles - Blackwell 2nd, Moser 5th
5K Meter Run - Bowen 3rd, Shrock 4th
4x400 Meter Relay - Cedarville 1st (Bird, Yoder, Bernard, Gerhart)
High Jump - Tvardzik 1st, Bernard 2nd
Long Jump - Thompson 2nd
3K Meter Run - Michalski 1st, Vega 2nd
1 Mile Run - Thayer 1st, Perez 3rd, Bitner 4th, Wheeler 6th
Shot Put - Ballentine 6th
Distance Medley Relay - Cedarville 1st (De Jong, Jones, Wheeler, Greenwood)
Pole Vault- Blackwell 1st*, Sturgeon 2nd
*James Blackwell has once again qualified for NCAA DII Indoor Nationals, and will be competing sometime this week. Keep up with @CUJackets on Twitter for live results!
Our team competed well for Cedarville and for Christ this past weekend! Just like every other Cedarville sport, we recognize that everything is "For Him!" The G-MAC Championship marks the end of our 2015 Indoor Season for most of us, so in these next few weeks we will be preparing for Outdoor!
Feb. 25, 2015
Christian NationalsThis past weekend we had our National Christian College Athletic Association Indoor Track & Field Championships. It was in our very own Doden Field House, so thanks to those of you who made it out to see some of it!
We competed against 21 other Christian colleges throughout the country, with teams from Indiana, Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, and many more. We came in to this meet with one goal - compete well, and compete for Christ.
Just to get a picture of what the meet was like, Nationals was a two-day meet, which started at 4:00 p.m. on Friday. On Friday evening the field events started out the meet, continued with the preliminaries of the "dash" races (55 meter, 55 meter hurdles) and finished with the 5K, distance medley relay, and the 4 x 200 meter relay. The next day continued with field events, and finished with the 4 x 800 meter relay, the finals of the dashes and hurdles, the mile, 400, 800, 3K, and finished with the 4 x 400 meter relay.
Meet highlights:- Blackwell wins pole vault
- Distance Medley Relay (DMR) (Greenwood, Dannelly, De Jong, Michalski)
- Cheney second in the 5K
- 4 x 800 meter relay (Greenwood, Johnson, Wheeler, Reece) takes fifth place
- Michalski second in the mile
- Bernard third in the 400 meters
- De Jong second and Dannelly fourth in the 800 meters
(There were many other highlights such as personal records, fun times, great laughs, team fellowship and...Subway!)
Our team competed hard and well and took third place! We were very proud to make it to nationals and were excited that we finished third overall. Thank you again to all of you who came out to support, it really does help fuel us to compete well!
Our next meet marks the end of our indoor season, the Great Midwest Athletic Conference (G-MAC) championship at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio this Saturday. Our team is excited to compete well and glorify Christ in our efforts!
Feb. 18, 2015This past weekend our track team competed at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. This was a huge NCAA Division I meet with big name schools such as the University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and University of South Florida. Our team competed well, and we had a great time.
We left for IU at around 10:30 a.m. last Friday, and arrived at 1:00 p.m. We were the first team there, so of course we decided to go explore. IU has a pretty sweet campus but nothing really compares to that banked track! Most tracks are flat and are kind of hard to sprint on. Banked tracks are normally faster because you don't have to lean as much on the curves, so getting to run there was a ton of fun. Anyways, let's look at the results!
At this qualifying meet our men's team was involved in just a few different events, and competed pretty well throughout them. Matthew Bird came in 12th in the 200 meter dash, running the third fastest time in Cedarville history on a banked track. Josiah Bernard placed 21st in the 400 meter dash running the sixth fastest time in Cedarville history. Our 4 x 400 team (Bird, Gerhart, Yoder, Bernard) also ran well marking the fourth fastest time in school history!
This coming weekend is our NCCAA meet. It is the National Christian College Athletic Association Indoor Championship and we have the privilege of hosting it in our Doden Field House! If you want to see a fun track meet packed with excellent competition and full of entertainment, come check us out! The meet starts on Friday afternoon, and carries over through Saturday night. There are more details on our website, check them out!
Feb. 11, 2015This meet was a good one! Our men's team took 4th at Ohio Northern University this past weekend, where we met a lot of PR's, NCCAA Championship qualifying marks, and had a lot of people place in the top 3 in their events!
Some of the top events included:
James Blackwell competed in the men's pole vault, took first place, as well as set a meet record with a vault of 15-6.25.
Klaassen and
Bird finished 3rd and 4th in the 200 meters, both reaching season-best times.
Josiah Bernard took 3rd in the 400 meters with a time of 50.98 seconds.
Erik Johnson finished 3rd in the 500 meters at 1:10.
Phil Dannelly finished 2nd in the 800 meters with a time of 2:00.
Tim De Jong took 3rd in the 1000 meters with a time of 2:38.
Our 4 x 200 relay team (
Yoder, Bird, Meyers, Jones) took 2nd just .01 seconds away from taking first!
Our 4 x 400 relay team (
Bernard, Yoder, De Jong, Gerhart) also took second, only .57 seconds off of 1st place!
We had many different PR's among the team, which as I stated last week, are a great accomplishment. We are always excited to push our bodies further and get better at our events! Hopefully we will continue to reach new PR's, and find ourselves competing even better for Christ!
This weekend is one of the biggest meets of our season, at Indiana University! Last year on the way to the meet we were stuck in traffic (stupid snow...) for around two hours, resulting with some people completely missing their events, and others had five minutes to warm up before the gun went off! We ended up getting back to school at 6 a.m., and it was a great/miserable experience. Hopefully this weekend will be a little less hectic, and our team will be able to bust out some great times!
Feb. 4, 2015We had a great home meet this past weekend! Our men's team came in first place at the meet due to some spectacular performances from our athletes. The home meet was really fun and exciting because all of our friends could come and watch us compete and had a chance to see what track is all about, so thank you all for coming out to support!
Our men's team won with 157 points, over Rio Grande with 119 points and Campbellsville with 58 points. Our event winners were James Blackwell in the men's pole vault, Josiah Bernard in the 400 meter dash with a time of 51.10, our men's 4 x 400 meter relay (Bernard, De Jong, Yoder, Gerhart), and Matt Cheney in the 3,000 meter run. We had a lot of our men come in second and third place as well, which gave us enough points to sweep the meet!
PR's (personal record) are something that track athletes get really excited about. Most of us have been track athletes since we were at least in high school, and every day we get out on a track and work our tails off to get better at our events. Unfortunately, not every meet comes with a new PR. The unfortunate truth is, you aren't going to run your best every single time you run. But it makes it that much more exciting when you finally throw that weight further, or pass that finish line faster, or jump those couple of inches further or higher. This weekend among the men and women's teams we saw a lot of different PR's, which was awesome!
One of my favorite things about Track & Field is that there's always someone to cheer for. Whenever I find myself not competing during a certain time, (this happens a lot because I only run for a total of about 29 seconds between both of my events) I can look around and most likely see others on my team competing. One of the best events to cheer for is the 4 x 400 meter relay. It's always towards the end of the meet, and at this point most of the team is done competing. During the 4 x 400 relay our whole team (besides the four running) does their best in cheering on our teammates. It's always a lot of fun being an encouragement to your friends! Our team gets really loud during this event because 80 people are now cheering on these four teammates! It's a really cool event to watch... and the sooner they finish the sooner we get food, so we always make sure to encourage them to run faster!
Our next meet is this weekend at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. Hopefully we will have some more PR's and get a chance to compete well for Christ!
Jan. 28, 2015Our first indoor track meet was a ton of fun. Our meet was in Indianapolis, about three hours away. Being on a bus with an entire track team ends up being really crowded and really hot, but when you are with your friends none of that really matters!
We arrived at the University of Indianapolis at around 12:30 p.m. The meet was scheduled to begin with the field events, (throwers, long jumpers, high jumpers, and pole-vaulters). About an hour after arriving at the meet, the running events began.
We had a great meet with a bunch of PR's, a few different event winners, runner-ups, and third place contestants! One awesome thing that I got to see happen was while I was warming up for the semi-finals of the 60 meter dash. My assistant coach, Jason Scott, was confronted by a coach of another team about the particular shirt he was wearing. Coach Scott was wearing an "I run for Jesus" shirt that he got from his t-shirt project. His idea originated a few years ago, its goal was to share who we are competing for to everyone who saw it. The idea was that even though we can't share Christ with a thousand athletes especially when are trying to compete, we can still show who we represent every time we compete. The man was very interested in learning more about the church, and wanted to see how he could also help spread the news of Jesus Christ. It was a really cool opportunity to see God work.
Moving on, our team seems to have a pattern of being the first team to arrive at the meet, but also one of the last to leave. This creates really long days full of fun and laughter, but needless to say, by the end of it we are exhausted and really just want some decent food and a place to crash. At 10:30 p.m. the last race was (finally) over. We had all finished our races and the only thing on our minds were food and sleep. While we were packing up our stuff to leave, a thrower from the University of Indy decided to give us two full pizza boxes...We definitely fought over them.
On the way back to school half of the team stopped at IHOP and the other half stopped at Denny's. We quickly realized that restaurants make food significantly slower when you are hungry and it is 11:15 p.m. at night. By the time we were all back on the bus and ready to head back to school, it was around 1:00 a.m. and we still had a three-hour bus ride! I was awake for the first 15 minutes, and I have never heard a bus with 80 people so quiet! I woke up to our bus pulling into school at 4:02 a.m. ....We were finally home!
Despite the incredibly long 18-hour trip, we had a ton of fun and enjoyed spending time with each other! We can't wait for our next meet this Friday here at home beginning at 3:30 p.m.! Excited to see what happens!
Jan. 23, 2015The 2015 Indoor Track & Field season is underway! Our first track meet is tomorrow (Saturday), and we hope to make it a good one! We are very excited to see what we can accomplish in this first meet!
Track meets are crazy. It's completely normal to walk into a track meet and see around 500 to 1000 different athletes all crammed into the infield of a 200 meter track. What makes it even crazier is that you can look around and find people sleeping, people stretching, people doing homework, and people sprinting full speed right behind you yelling "TRACK! TRACK!" so you know to move out of the way because you're about to get run-over. The point is, there are so many different things going on. It's important to remember that all of these athletes and coaches come from different places and all have different stories. Cedarville's track team wants to make an effort this season to remember who we are competing for.
Our goal as track athletes is to provide other teams with a great picture of what Christ's love looks like. As this indoor season begins we want others to see us differently because of the love we have for Christ!
Andre Klaassenis a sophomore sprinter from Louisville, Ky. He is in his second season with the Yellow Jackets and is majoring in sport management.
