May 18, 2021
Hello and welcome back to the final Men’s CUTF Blog of the 2020-21 season!
This past week we had two last chance meets - one on Thursday and one on Saturday. On Thursday, the pole vault squad (Tommy Ansiel, Haleigh Eckert, and myself) went to Hillsdale College in Michigan to try to improve our provisional marks and make it to NCAA DII Nationals. It was a lovely day of 70 degrees and slightly breezy when we vaulted in the mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, none of us were able to qualify for nationals, but I was grateful for the opportunity to end the season on a fun note with my event group. On the way back, we stopped at a restaurant that served BBQ, and Coach Bill and I ate what they call a Porkinator. It is a burger plus pulled pork, cheese sauce, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. Coach Bill jokingly asserted that it is a heart-attack on a plate.
Come Friday evening, we loaded up the 15 passenger van once again, but this time with part of the distance group and a destination of University of Toledo! The meet had an early start on Saturday, so we slept the night before at a nearby hotel instead of driving up at 4 AM (thank you Coach Orchard!). The guys had solid performances with Isaiah Kelly in the 5K and Braedon Killion, Alex Weber, and Coach Gatchell in the 1,500 meters. The sense I got from the group was slight disappointment that they weren’t able to qualify for nationals, but grateful to compete one last time. For a treat on the way back we stopped at Tropical Smoothie!
That wraps up the outdoor track season for the men’s team! All the guys have left campus, and now begin a brief period of much needed rest before we get into summer training. Thanks for tuning into the blog updates, I look forward to seeing what our team looks like once the indoor season starts in December!
May 12, 2021
Welcome back to the CUTF blog!
This past Wednesday through Friday the track team was down in Kentucky at Kentucky Wesleyan College for the G-MAC championship meet. Just a few highlights to share with you readers. We stayed at a Holiday Inn on the riverside with a beautiful overlook of the river and a walkway that went along the riverside and abutted the other hotels, restaurants, and convention centers neighboring the hotel. It all created a beautiful space with fountains, live music, a playground, and swings that overlook the river!
The first event groups to go down were throws, pentathlon, some jumps and the 10K. We loaded up the bus on Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m.-ish and hit the road for the five-hour drive to the Bluegrass State. Come Wednesday the events didn’t start until the afternoon so everyone had the wonderful opportunity to sleep in - something we all have been doing a lot of in an effort to catch up on the sleep we missed during finals week. Wednesday was a beautiful day with a high of 65 and slightly breezy. I spent the majority of my day at the pole vault pit supporting my teammates in the women’s pole vault. Weather was perfect for the vault and it showed in the competition!
On Thursday, prelims were held for every event 1500 meters and down, so it was a full day for many guys on the team! We had a ton of guys with strong performances that made finals in their events! On the track, our 4 x 100 relay team of Johnson, Salisbury, Thomas, and Jones ran in finals, in the 1,500 meters Braedon Killion, Alex Weber, and Ramen Felumlee, in the 400 meters Ben Hulbert and Will Faunce, in the 400 meter hurdles Trey Gruet, in the 5K Caleb Pendelton, Isaiah Kelly, Cooper Peterson, and Trevor Cross, and in the 4 x 400 relay Johnson, Hulbert, Meredith, and Faunce. In the field we had Caleb Fauth throw Jav in finals and place second and Luke Hannay threw a massive PR, moved up nine places on the seed list and made it to finals. Two special shout outs on the guys team go to Will Faunce for going sub 50 for the first time at G-MAC and to Caleb Fauth for breaking the G-MAC meet record in the Jav… along with the other top three finishers.
I’m proud of our team this year and how we have grown closer to each other, grown stronger in our athletic abilities, and grown to love Christ more each day. We’ve had to say goodbye to seniors, but look forward to meeting the new freshmen next year! This week we have meets on Thursday and Saturday as last chance meets before Nationals. Check back in next week for the update on those!
April 12, 2021
Hello and welcome back to the CUTF blog!
This past weekend the team and I traveled to Cleveland, Tennesssee to compete at the brand new facilities of Lee University. We arrived at the track on Thursday evening around 7 PM and did a little “shake out” at the track to familiarize ourselves with the venue and get our legs moving. We were wary of the weather going into the trip with a forecast of thunderstorms and rain all day Saturday. Events moved smoothly through the day on Friday with the exception of one lightning delay in the mid-afternoon.
Come Saturday, some events got rearranged to accommodate for expected high winds in the late morning and afternoon - pole vault included. The rain ended up holding off until later in the day which was a blessing for me specifically. Pole vault in the rain is tricky because when the pole gets wet, it becomes slippery and much easier to fall off mid-vault. On Saturday, it began to rain around 11 AM and picked up in the afternoon. It rained so hard that puddles were forming on the track so that they delayed the 400 meter hurdles.
On the way back home to Cedarville, Coach Bo took us all to a Mexican restaurant called Mi Casa. Let me tell you. It was amazing. The portions were massive, and it all tasted so so good! At the end of dinner someone told the staff that it was Coach Orchard’s birthday so they brought out a sombrero and sang Happy Birthday in Spanish to him! Everyone was laughing, it was a great time.
Tune in next week to hear about our meet at Tiffin on Saturday!
April 7, 2021
Hello and welcome back to the Men’s CUTF blog!
This past weekend, some of the team went down to High Point, North Carolina for a meet, while the rest of the team went to Taylor University in Indiana. Both meets were on the chilly side, below 40 degrees in the morning with wind! I went to the VertKlasse Meeting in NC, and we left campus Thursday morning to make the six-hour trek down to High Point University. I made the trip with Ryan Rager, Haleigh Eckert, and Lauren Willow. The track itself was beautiful! There was a building with large columns overshadowing the track and another that was in the process of being constructed. This building in process was to be a basketball facility with 40 hotel rooms and three Five-Star restaurants inside.
The day started off pretty cold, but it warmed up as the day went on, we all laid on the turf as Haleigh vaulted because it was approximately 50 degrees warmer on the turf because of the sun! Everyone had to deal with nasty wind during their competition, so no one had a record-breaking day. It was great to be at a meet with stiff competition at such depth! We all were challenged and pushed by our competitors.
In Indiana, the team had a similar experience with weather, but it didn’t stop Ben Place from coming back from an injury with a very strong performance in the 400 meters! This was his collegiate debut, and he nailed it! Congrats, Ben!
This weekend, the team will split again to go to Lee University in Tennessee and Indiana Tech University.
See you next time!
March 29, 2021
Woohoo! Welcome to the outdoor season! The Yellow Jacket Men kicked it off with a BANG this past weekend at our home opener! We had lots of great performances, a few of which I will highlight later on in my entry. Leading up into the meet, we were expecting a lot of rain Thursday/Friday which would’ve made the track a mud pit, but praise the Lord it held off! The ground was dry enough to hold about 675+ athletes in our outdoor facilities.
Saturday shaped up to be a gorgeous day! It was 70 degrees, breezy, and sunny for most of the late morning and afternoon. I remarked with one of my teammates that it's hard to believe that it is still March and we’re having this kind of weather--in OHIO, no less! Many of us forgot just how quickly our wintery, pasty skin can get sunburnt (including yours truly).
The track felt alive with so many contestants, a welcome change from the socially distanced, virtually empty indoor meets. There were visiting team tents all over the place, flags waving in the wind, and smiles all around. I can’t express how good it was to be back competing outside. For me, as of Saturday, it had been 650 days since my last outdoor competition, and I’m on the low end of the spectrum! Some other guys were closer to 700 days!
Two guys I’d like to congratulate are Noah Errichetti and Caleb Fauth. Both of these athletes are Javelin throwers, so they haven’t been able to compete at all since the outdoor season in 2019 because Jav is only an outdoor event. Errichetti showed up big-time with a five meter PR in the first competition back in two years! They placed second and third respectively. Andrew Reinhard also PR’ed in the high jump this weekend with a jump of 6’ 4.75” and a second place finish! I think he told me that he has cleared his previous PR five or six times before getting a new PR this weekend! Talk about consistency! ;)
On a much more sad note, fellow pole vaulter, Tommy Ansiel, pulled his hamstring mid-vault during competition and took a nasty fall from the peak of his vault. He has been plagued by injuries that are out of his control during his collegiate career, so I’d ask for prayers of encouragement and healing on his behalf. A truth I’ve been reminded of because of this is that God can use us and give us joy, despite our physically crippled state. I think that can apply to all of us, regardless of our physical limitations. God is bigger than our physical (or emotional, mental, relational, etc.) pains, and He can and will work the state we’re in for His glory even though it doesn’t feel like it when we are in the midst of the pain. Amen! That was encouraging for me to think about over the past day or so, and I hope it will be for you too.
This weekend, the team will be going to Taylor University for meet #2 of the 2021 outdoor season!
See you next time!
March 15, 2021
Welcome back to the Men’s CUTF blog! This past weekend was another championship weekend! A few of us drove down to Birmingham, Alabama for Tommy Ansiel to compete in the NCAA Division II Indoor National Championships. We left Wednesday afternoon in a minivan with the pole vaulting poles strapped to the side, courtesy of Coach Mac! We were driven out of Cedarville via a police escort along with the Women’s Basketball Team. It was a looooong drive down to Alabama, but Coach Bo kindly drove the whole way down and back!
One fun fact from the week was we were COVID tested three times in four days! Woohoo! So fun! Everything was really different at national’s because of COVID precautions. No one was allowed in the venue unless they were a coach with an athlete competing that day. Because of this, we had a lot of time to kill until Tommy competed on Saturday. We passed time by eating (a lot), exploring the city of Birmingham, talking, doing homework :(, and playing a few video games. One cool thing Tommy and I found was this old castle on a hill in Birmingham a few blocks away from our hotel. You can find it on Google if you search “Quinlan Castle in Birmingham, AL.”
Come competition day, we arrived at the CrossPlex at 10:45 a.m., got checked in, and Tommy began his warm-ups. At 11:15 a.m., we were escorted to the track by an official, and they had the coaches split off from the athletes to go to the coach’s box. Warm-ups on the runway were rocky for many of the vaulters, including Tommy. Something wasn’t working quite right in his jump. When Tommy came in at his opening bar, 4.97 meters, his jump still wasn’t looking normal. As he cleared each following height, his jump began to look better. He worked through the problems in his jump during competition and pulled out second place!
It's hard to convey how impressive this is. Normally, when a vaulter has an off day, they will no-height or only clear one or two bars that day. Tommy was able to fight through his off day and end up at the top of the competition! He took 12 vaults in competition, which is also a feat because it is common knowledge in the pole vault community that a vaulter usually has 5-7 “good” vaults in them at any given meet. While second place is a feat in and of itself, I was more impressed by Tommy’s ability to fight hard through the difficulties of the meet and conquer them.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team has been training hard to prepare for the outdoor season starting with a home meet on Saturday, March 27th! Hope to see you there!
February 22, 2021
Hello and welcome back to the Men’s CUTF blog! This past Saturday the team traveled up to Michigan to compete at Hillsdale College. Once again, the field events left before the track events at 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. respectively. The field events didn’t exactly leave on time because we forgot to grab our food from Chuck’s (the dining hall) the night before! We had to call Campus Safety and ask them to come unlock the SSC (Stevens Student Center) so we could get the food to hold us over until the track events came later with our lunch. With that hiccup behind us, we took off down the road toward Hillsdale. Most of us slept the whole way until we arrived around 9 a.m. Until the rest of the team arrived, it was a fairly low-key meet - allowing us to concentrate on our performances.
Everyone has been putting in hard work over the season, and many guys had a PR this weekend! I will try to relay all the PR’s, but there were so many, one may have fallen through the cracks of my canvassing. Notable performances include: Tommy Ansiel winning the pole vault with 17’ 2.25” (5.24m) and solidifying his #1 spot nationally, Andrew Reinhard winning the high jump and tying his PR of 6’ 4.25” (1.94m), Cooper Peterson PR’ing in the 3K with a 8:51.22, Jaden Johnson PR’ing in the 60 meters with a 7.13 and 200 meters with a 22.92, Josh Jones PR’ing in the 200 meters with a 23.72, David Entz PR’ing in the 200 meters with a 23.97, and Trey Gruet PR’ing in the 200 meters with a 24.18. Special congratulations to Ryan Rager for breaking his own 200 meters school record by 0.03 seconds with a 22.24! As you can undoubtedly tell, this was a good meet for many!
As the meet wrapped up, we got pizza for dinner and goofed around with each other, celebrating a fun day.
This weekend, we are hosting the G-MAC Championship meet at home Friday and Saturday. We are anticipating many more PR’s and strong performances from the guy’s team!
February 16, 2021
Welcome back to the Men’s CUTF blog! This past weekend we went to Ohio Wesleyan University to compete. This meet was on Friday evening, giving us a full weekend to catch up on homework! It was a smaller meet than most of us were used to, being a dual meet. The last time any of us had a dual meet was back in high school!
The indoor track had an interesting roof and ceiling, it looked like it had previously been a sanctuary and was later converted to a track. It had very steeply pitched roofs with several pinnacles throughout the ceiling.
The field events left Cedarville in the early afternoon (around 2 PM) followed by the rest of the team around 4 PM. It was very quiet at the meet with there only being two teams and just the field events. As a pole vaulter, I liked how quiet it was because I find the gunshots and yelling of a normal meet a little distracting while trying to vault indoors.
There were a number of really great performances on the guys team, so I’ll kick it off with my fellow pole vaulter, Tyler Reinhard, with a massive one-foot PR of 14-6! Tyler just began pole vaulting at the beginning of last year and is already finding great success! In the 60 meter, Ryan Rager almost broke the school record with a time of 7.10! The record is 7.09, so keep an eye out for this Saturday at Hillsdale College; maybe Rager can do it then! Luke Hannay had a strong performance and PR in the weight throw with a huge distance of 15.42 meters (52-10.25)! Finally, freshmen Josh Jones and Jaden Johnson ran well in the 60 meters and 200 meters respectively!
That’s it for now, check in next week to hear about our meet at Hillsdale this coming Saturday!
February 9, 2021
Hello again CUTF family, thanks for tuning into the blog once again! This past weekend we had yet another weird meet. We sent up our distance team and multi athletes Friday evening to Tiffin to compete, then field events went up Saturday morning with the rest of the team (sprints and more distance) following towards lunch time. I am not sure how I feel about these long and drawn out meets. There are a few positives: 1) there is ample room to warm up and cool down with there being less athletes in the building at a given time and 2) you don’t have to stay all day if your event(s) are only in one part of the meet because we take multiple buses. On the other hand, I am unable to watch my teammates in other sections of the meet and cheer them on as they compete. All in all, it's a different experience than any of us have had before, and I know I look forward to the day that we can have a normal meet once again!
At the meet, we set up camp in their indoor turf field which is a stone’s throw away from the track. They had about nine teams set up along the sides of the field all spaced out to maintain distance between teams. The events ran smoothly without any large hiccups and we actually finished the meet on time!
Special congrats to Cooper Peterson for winning the 5K with a time of 15:28 followed by Yellow Jackets taking six of the top seven places. Also, in the pole vault Tommy Ansiel hit the NCAA DII auto qualifying mark to secure his place at Nationals! Finally, Ryan Rager won the 400 meters with a time of 49.78!
There are lots of big things coming for guys on the team; stay tuned to hear about more great performances next week!
February 1, 2021
Hello and welcome back to the Men’s Indoor CUT&F Blog! I’m Matt Julian, a sophomore pole vaulter (and occasional 4 x 400 meter relay C-Team participant) on the team. This past weekend the Men’s Team competed at Indiana Tech University in Fort Wayne, Indiana!
First I’d like to introduce our new freshmen this year! We have enjoyed getting to know them - they’ve fit right into the team! In the sprints we have Will Faunce, Jaden Johnson (who also is a jumper), Josh Jones, Ben Place, and Brandon Thomas. Additions to the hurdle crew are David Entz, Dalan Livingston, and Garrett Reinhard. Nathan Menk represents the freshman class in long, triple, and high jumps. Our new distance member is Will Hanak. Welcome freshmen! You will definitely be seeing these guys’ names in upcoming blogs/announcements as they are a hardworking class! Now, on to our meet this weekend.
Friday, January 29th, we beat the sun up, an unusual occurrence for a bunch of college students. Our steps lit by the 15-passenger van’s dome lights, we crammed into bench seats and got as comfortable as we could for the next three hours. Senior Tommy Ansiel exercised his seniority on the team and took an entire row to sprawl out upon to get some beauty sleep, leaving Sarah Himes to sit on the floor (this was actually Sarah’s choice, but we still like to mess with Tommy a little). Some slept more than others, but we all stumbled into the Turnstone Center and prepped for our events at 8:45 a.m.
The track is used as a Paralympic Training Center, and a few of us that did not compete right away decided to go exploring around the building. We walked into an unfamiliar part of the building where things didn’t feel quite right. Hallways with handrails, community rooms, checkered tile flooring, and IV machines were our first clues that we had actually walked into a care facility for patients with physical disabilities! Upon our revelation, we promptly left.
The meet was a great way for us to see the hard work we’ve put in materialize. Freshman
Ben Place had a strong race in the 400 meters clocking in at 52.25! Senior
Tommy Ansiel competed for the first time since his sophomore year and hit the NCAA II national provisional mark with a vault of 5.20m (17-0.75)! He has been kept out of competition from a hamstring injury (and COVID). He asked me to express his gratitude to God for giving him the ability to recover and even compete again. Praise God! For every story of a successful recovery from injury, we also have teammates that are currently out of competition due to injuries. Please pray for health and renewed trust in God as they walk down the path to recovery.
The team was split and went in two groups: the early group and the late group. I was in the early group, and were able to leave the meet by 1 p.m.-ish and got back to school at about 5 p.m. The late group, on the other hand, didn’t get back on campus until 1 a.m! Shout out to
Nathan Menk and
Jaden Johnson for staying all day because they had events in the morning and evening. From start to finish, it was a 21 hour day for them!
We look forward to another week of intense training leading up to our meet at Tiffin University this weekend.
Matt Julian is a sophomore pole vaulter from Lancaster, Pa. He is in his second season with the Yellow Jackets and is a Dean's Honor List student majoring in finance.
