Official Great Midwest Indoor T&F Championships Page
Meet Program (PDF)
Heat Sheets (PDF)
LIVE VIDEO
LIVE RESULTS
HILLSDALE, Mich. – Hillsdale’s Margot V. Biermann Athletic Center will serve as home for all 13 institutions competing in the fourth annual Great Midwest Athletic Conference Track & Field Championships starting Friday.
And oh boy, with nationally-ranked teams, auto qualifiers and many provisional qualifiers scattered throughout the facility, fans and supporters of the league couldn’t ask for much more.
The sport has taken tremendous strides as the conference added five first-year member institutions – and that doesn’t include defending national indoor champion Tiffin, ticketed for league entry in 2018-19.
Malone’s men is tasked with the burden of repeating while Cedarville’s women is attempting for a third consecutive conference title. Malone’s reigning G-MAC Indoor/Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year Ashton Dulin will do his best to bring as many points home for the Pioneers’ cause.
Cedarville’s national 800-meter champion Carsyn Koch has been sidelined with an injury for the indoor season and is looking to be at full strength for the outdoor campaign. The Yellow Jackets’ ladies will rely on team depth to remain a contender during the weekend.
From sprints, to distance, to jumps, to throws, the Great Midwest has asserted itself among the best in the nation with top times and distances in various events. Existing conference meet records may be short lived and are in peril more than ever based on performance charts around the league.
By the numbers, 12 different conference records have been broken on the men’s side while the women have hit the reset button on 11 different events in 2017-18 alone.
Multis events for the men’s heptathlon and women’s pentathlon will be scored for the first time in Great Midwest Championship history. Competition for both will officially usher in the start of the meet on Friday morning.
Winers from a total of 34 different conference championship events will be awarded over the next two days.
And for the first time, the Great Midwest Track & Field Championships will be streamed online through the Great Midwest Digital Network and live results will also be updated in real time. Links to both options can be found on the official championship page.
Men’s Track
Alderson Broaddus speedster Todd Sekowski has had an entertaining rivalry with Kentucky Wesleyan’s James Glenn the past few years, but Glenn has since transferred…Sekowski has his sights set on Glenn’s 60-meter dash record, just three hundredths of a second away from matching it…Findlay sophomore Lenell Shelby III also has a top-10 time in the 60m dash this year…Walsh’s Hunter Williams broke the 200-meter record twice this season; Malone’s Dulin and Findlay’s George Effah potentially in the field is something to monitor carefully…Dulin has dominated the 60-meter hurdles, a record that had stood since 2014 before the junior crushed it three times…In the past two weeks, Ohio Dominican’s Justin Carroll has shattered the 800-meter record while also ranking among the best in the 400 (and also helping ODU capture a new 4x4 relay record)…Hillsdale’s talented trio of Lane White, Nate Eldridge and Konnor Maloney, are all clustered in the same pack in the 400-meter run with less than one second separating all of their best runs…The mile, 3K and 5K, have precious points at stake in the team scoring with many cross country standouts taking center stage in the longer distances…Hillsdale sophomore Joseph Humes has the 3K record by almost three seconds, Walsh junior Mark Hadley ranks top five in both the 3K and 5K and Cedarville’s Men’s XC Athlete of the Year Daniel Michalski cracked his own mile record at the Akron Invitational….And don’t forget Michalski is an outdoor national champion…It comes as no surprise that Walsh won the men’s cross country team title in the fall with Hillsdale and Cedarville also near the top.
Men’s Field
Findlay’s Austin Combs is a legitimate national title contender in the shot put and weight throw, ranking fourth and second, respectively, among all throwers in the country…The entire throws corps is impressive around the league with Findlay rookie Dequan Lovell, Walsh’s Dante Penza, Marcus Myers and Bradley Gallitz, with Hillsdale’s Daniel Capek, all cementing status as provisional qualifiers…Findlay senior Trey Everett has already auto qualified in the heptathlon, tied for the fourth-most points in DII this season with Kodiak Landis (Central Washington); his elite athleticism will be on display in all seven events, particularly the jumps where he established a conference long jump and high jump record twice already…Another Oiler, freshman Martin Etsey, is a triple jump standout while Cedarville freshman Tommy Ansiel is the presumed favorite in pole vault.
Women’s Track
Ursuline’s do-it-all junior Janelle Perry is a flat-out star…With conference records in hurdles and jumps, she is a viable national championship favorite after winning her first outdoor NCAA title to close out her sensational sophomore campaign…The parallels for cross country success carrying over to track and field, like the men, are just as familiar with the women…Hillsdale’s reigning women’s cross country title team features 3K/5K record holder/USTFCCCA national runner of the week Hannah McIntyre and G-MAC XC Freshman of the Year Maryssa Depies, Arena Lewis, Allysen Eads, etc...Walsh’s Sarah Berger (NCAA Women’s XC runner-up) and Andra Lehotay were both athletes of the week and the Cavaliers’ DMR and 4x4 relays units are among the strongest in the league…Findlay’s Milani Glass and Hillsdale’s Zalonya Eby are a pair of names to look for in short sprints as they each have registered top-10 times in conference history.
Women’s Field
As a three-time conference field athlete of the week, Findlay’s Alex DeVincentis headlines the wave of talented throwers in the league that have taken the Great Midwest by storm…Hillsdale senior Rachael Tolsma held the weight throw record for most of 2017-18 until DeVincentis edged her slightly in the last regular-season meet going into the conference championships…The talented throwing duo of Crystal Hopkins and Cornelia Thomas of Kentucky Wesleyan are back in their senior campaigns as standouts for Tony Rowe's Panthers' program; both are indoor and outdoor league champs in respective events...Ursuline’s Sugar Henry took down a triple jump record that has stood the test of time longer than any other record at this point in the league’s history…And don’t forget Perry, who has possession of all top-10 marks in the long jump for her career…Pole vault has been dominated by auto qualifier Kaitlyn Barber of Walsh, who easily broke the conference record in her season debut...Malone's Olga Branney, just a sophomore, has fended off some serious competition for her claim of the high jump record, including Ohio Dominican's Megan Tamasovich and most recently, Lake Erie's Madison Plante, who jumped into the top 10 list of all-time.