WMVO Good Times Great Oldies
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — Shortly after a contingent from Kenyon College’s men’s indoor track and field team competed in Berea, Ohio, qualifying Owls took part in the All-Ohio Championship in Westerville, Ohio. Kenyon tallied 12.5 team points and finished 12th in the 13-team field after scoring in four events.
Five of Kenyon’s points came from the field, while the others were earned on the track. Riley Orth did the heavy lifting on the day, and his fourth-place finish in the shot put was the team’s best placement of the outing. The senior registered a 15.30-meter (50-2 ¼) toss on his fifth and final attempt that was just 1.25 inches behind the third-place mark. Orth also competed in the weight throw, an event in which he reset the program record for three straight weeks, but he could not rewrite the record books a fourth time with an 11th-place finish.
Kenyon’s next-best finish came in the final individual event, the 3,000-meter. Peter Bernhardt, a sophomore, secured sixth after stopping the clock at 9:00.36, earning three points in the process. The Owls benefitted from another sixth-place finish in the 400-meter, but Collin Witt had to settle for 2.5 points after a photo finish resulted in a tie. The senior clocked in at 51.83 in the race.
Witt had a busy day, participating in three of the 10 finals where Kenyon competed. He narrowly missed a couple extra points in his other two races, the 200-meter dash and the 4×200-meter relay. His ninth-place time of 23.22 in the 200 was 0.06 seconds back of eighth, and he anchored the 4×200 relay where Witt joined Kendall Weaver, Tapiwa Gono Phiri, and Jonathan Turner in posting a ninth-place time of 1:35.15 that fell a second behind seventh and 0.37 seconds short of securing eighth to score a point.
Another relay, the distance medley relay, rounded out Kenyon’s scoring. The quartet of Owen Rodstrom, Turner, Dylan Sibbitt, and Jack Caine crossed the finish line at 10:56.39, good for seventh place and two points. Their mark was 0.77 seconds behind sixth, which marks a season-best time in the event for Kenyon.
Three other Owls competed in event finals. On the track, Sibbitt, a sophomore, placed 10th in the 800-meter with a time of 2:02.30, while first-year Arthur Wellenstein was 10th in the mile. Wellenstein’s time of 4:30.03 is a Kenyon season-best and a personal best. In the field, sophomore Josh Greville placed 12th in the triple jump with a 12.17-meter (39-11 ¼) leap on his first attempt.
The University of Mount Union won the Championship with a score of 118 points. Baldwin Wallace University, where Kenyon competed last night, placed second with 100.5 points while hosting Otterbein University finished third with 96.5.
Kenyon has a busy schedule ahead, as the Owls will host events on five days over the next two weeks. The Kenyon Tune Up is first up on Friday, February 16, followed by the combined events of the 2024 North Coast Athletic Conference Championships from February 17-18. After the combined events, Kenyon will host the NCAC Indoor Track and Field Championships from February 23-24.
