In one of the tougher meets of the season, the Bradley Braves track team went to South Bend, Ind., to compete at Notre Dame for the Meyo Invitational. There, the team faced steep competition from ACC, Big Ten and Missouri Valley opponents among others.
The Braves held their own against the strong competition.
“[Junior] Tianna LoStracco breaking our school record that has stood for 10-plus years puts her top 45 in the nation in the mile, so that was huge,” Gauson said. “[Graduate] Matt Aho moved into the top 10 in the school rankings, [sophomore] Shae Fuller broke the school record in the [womens] triple jump.”
Fuller placed 13th in the women’s triple jump competition overall with a mark of 11.59 meters.
Aho placed second in the Ryan Shay 3000 meter run. With a time of 8:10.52, Aho was only 2.45 seconds from the win.
“It’s a good step in the right direction, especially from where I was two weeks ago at Iowa State,” Aho said. “It was a very welcome sign to see the progress I made over the past two weeks.”
At the Cyclone Open, Aho ran a 8:19.84 and placed sixth. The graduate student is striding in the right direction, shaving nine seconds off his time. While it doesn’t seem like much, that same time this weekend would have put him eighth instead of second.
“The goal is to win, obviously; every race I go in with that kind of mindset,” Aho said. “Thought I had a shot to win, kind of a race to win, but obviously in a race like that it’s a high quality meet, and I’m happy to get second with a field like that. Going into a field like that and getting second is something to be proud of.”
“[The] nine second PR for him puts him in our top six in school history,” Gauson said. “[He] has a chance to win the conference championship.”
LoStracco placed fifth place in the mile run with a time of 4:39.00.
“I didn’t actually have any expectations since I haven’t actually ran the mile before on the track. I knew it was going to feel different,” LoStracco said. “It quickly started to hurt, but overall I thought it went really well.”
LoStracco definitely performed past any expectation for a runner’s first race in a competition.
“I didn’t really know where I was in the race for a while,” Lostracco said. “In that last lap I was able to pass a few more and place fifth.”
“[That was] arguably one of [LoStracco’s] best performances ever at Bradley,” Gauson said. “She’s an outstanding athlete, Canadian junior champ in the 800. She’s really on the tear right now.”
Gauson believes the Braves will enter the Missouri Valley Conference Championships ranked third out of the 12 women’s teams and fourth out of the 12 teams on the men’s side. After winning the MVC in both men’s and women’s cross country in the fall, Gauson believes that they’ll come in and do some damage, no matter how this team is ranked.
“We’re gonna be in the mix to win a lot of individual events and as a team, place really well too,” Gauson said. “[I] love how we’re coming together and love the position we’re in.”
With only one more weekend before the MVC championship, the team has one last test. They are splitting up, sending runners to the GVSU Big Meet in Allendale, Mich., and the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston, Mass.
“One more really good test, one more opportunity for them to travel and compete against national level competition, and we’ll be freshened up ready to go for MVC,” Gauson said. “This is definitely our weekend, it’s the last big one before conference. This is our inflection point of the season.”
