Posted: Apr 20, 2024

Lange Clocks Provisional time in 1,500m at Phil Esten Challenge

LA CROSSE, Wis. – The Michigan Tech track & field team claimed 14 personal-bests marks in its regular season finale at the Phil Esten Challenge hosted by UW-La Crosse on Saturday.

Junior Sam Lange won his fourth race of the season with his 1,500m victory in 3:48.38, hitting the provisional standard in a new season's best time. Sophomore Donavan Mattson lowered his personal-best in the 5,000m for the second consecutive week, knocking off more than six seconds from a week ago to mark the second event winner for the Huskies.

Quotable

"The strength of our men's 5k squad was on display today with how densely they packed up at the front of that field," head coach Robert Young said. "Donavan Mattson continued his ascent at that distance with another nice PR while Colman Lenci can oh so close to his first sub-15 clocking.

We saw some great consistency out of Mady VanWieren in the 1,500m notching another season's best and Sophia Rhein matching her 5,000m mark from a week ago. It shows those marks were no fluke and they'll be in the mix come the GLIAC Championships in a couple of weeks.

Sam Lange seems to be coming into his best form at the most important time. He'll need to go a bit faster to make the national meet, but it seems likely he has another gear or two for the upcoming championship season.

JPN and Ben Conlin jumped up to the longer distance today with great success. John is on a heater right now and hardly anyone can outrun him down the homestretch. We've seen this talent in him for some time and it's great to see him developing into a mid-distance force.

Our 10,000m runners both had great nights. Isaac's ability to manage adversity from a scheduling mixup and still put together a strong race is a testament to his resiliency. Cedar's debut at the distance really highlighted one of her strengths as a runner. She was patient, and consistent, running her race the whole way and closing with a fierce final lap for a very strong first go at the longest race in the program.

Jaime has looked great in practice all week so her high jump PR was no surprise while also being very exciting. She's worked hard developing her power and finesse in this event and has come a long way this year."

"Our highlights of the meet were definitely the performances by Reilly Lovercheck and Ryan Schwiderson," graduate assistant coach Luke Moore mentioned. "Reilly had a massive PR in the 400m hurdles–it was great to see her make a huge step towards her season goals.

"Ryan and I worked on block technique this week and it paid off in the 100m final. He stunned the field with a second-place finish and was the lone competitor to run faster in the final than the prelims."

Pacing work by coach Moore helped bring the Huskies three new personal-bests over 5,000m following Mattson's victory, first-year Colman Lenci (15:00.77) and Henry Snider (15:05.98) also got one race closer to breaking the sub 15-minute barrier.

The Black & Gold continued to display the depth of the middle distance crew, with John Paul Norland and Ben Conlin moving up in distance to the 1,500m, throwing down impressive times of 4:01.12 and 4:02.92, respectively. The men's 800m also provided growth as the top-three Huskies all ran personal-best times led by freshman Brandon Latta (1:56.06), with Connor Stefanovsky (1:56.51) and Lucas Seng (1:57.01) also improving over two laps.

Reilly Lovercheck had a breakthrough performance, commanding the first heat of the 400m hurdles, leading wire-to-wire to lower her personal-best by over three seconds, clocking 1:05.78.

Up Next

The Huskies will have a weekend off from competition before gearing up for the GLIAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships held at Grand Valley State on May 1-3.

Complete Michigan Tech Results

Women

5,000m

2nd Sophia Rhein 17:38.80

5th Ingrid Halverson 18:50.58 - personal-best

8th Alisa Teige 19:03.08

9th Amyla Eberhart 19:46.44

400m Hurdles

3rd Reilly Lovercheck 1:05.78 - personal-best

High Jump

5th Jamie Hendrickson 1.64m (5-4.5) - personal-best

Javelin