The Slippery Rock University men’s track and field team competed in its last home meet of the season last Saturday at the Bill Lennox Track.
The meet is named the Dave Labor Memorial Invitational in honor of late SRU sprint and hurdle coach Dave Labor. This was the fourth time the meet was held since his passing in 2011, and former athletes and alumni that ran for Labor came back to run an unattached 100 meter dash.
“We had several personal bests and season bests at our meet this weekend,” Rock head coach John Papa said. “We knew that when we had good weather at our own facility we were ready to erupt with great performances. We have two weeks until the conference meet and our team is ready for the challenge.”
With just one week until the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference meet, the men produced 36 qualifying marks, four NCAA provisional marks and three event wins.
The men’s throws began strong with a win by senior Trevor Miller in the shot put. His throw of 16.54 meters was a NCAA provisional mark.
Senior Jerrod Galloway joined Miller in the shot put event with a throw of 13.82 meters. Miller also competed in the hammer throw and took fourth with a distance of 48.63 meters. Senior Nick Garuccio took second in the event at 51.71 meters.
Junior David Reinhardt took third in the javelin with an NCAA provisional throw of 58.69 meters. He also took sixth in the discus at 42.61 meters. Freshman Caleb Smithco took first in the triple jump with an NCAA provisional distance and personal best of 14.70 meters. Junior Adam Leeper also competed in the event and took third at 14.18 meters. Smithco and Leeper also placed in the long jump taking third and sixth with distances of 6.87 meters and 6.54 meters.
Freshman Noah Bostick rounded out the jumping events with a third place finish in the high jump with a distance of two meters.
The men’s pole vault crew placed six men in the top eight spots with sophomore Jordan Pacheco taking second with a vault of 4.96 meters. This vault is currently ranked first in the PSAC and 12th in the nation. Freshman Andrew Koksal, junior Cody Colagrande, junior Michael Horrigan and senior Andrew Lovano followed behind sweeping spots three through six. The men’s sprints finished with many Rock runners take top places. Senior Hunter Williams ran a personal best of 10.77 seconds in the 100 meter dash. Sophomore’s Erik Record and Brandon Vanderbrook also competed in the 100 meter dash, finishing in seventh and eighth with times of 10.78 seconds and 10.81 seconds respectively.
Chapman and Chandler also ran in the 400 meter dash taking second and fourth with times of 49.41 seconds and 49.47 seconds. Bostick started out the hurdle crew with a second place finish in the 110 meter hurdles at 14.85 seconds. Junior Ryan Thompson rounded out the last of the event wins with a 1:55.16 personal best time in the 800 meter run. Sophmore Tyler Palenchak finished the 1,500 meter run with a time of 3:59.14, a personal best. Senior Tyler Melius rounded out the distance events with a 4:01.80 1,500 meter run.
“As a team we performed very well in all of our events and made the most of the great weather and good competition,” Palenchak said. “We have all been training really hard for this part of the season and I’m very excited for all of us to see that hard work pay off and give us the ability to be very competitive at the PSAC championship meet.”
The Green and White are set to compete this weekend in Ashland, Ohio at the Ashland Open on Friday and Saturday. This will be the team’s final tune up before their conference meet held April 30 through May 2 at East Stroudsburg University.
