Put good in, get good out.
Bradley senior George Watson found this to be true when he highlighted Bradley track and field’s performance this past weekend at the Fighting Illini Challenge.
“I’ve just been feeling good recently, it’s just as simple as that,” Watson said. “I had some really tasty pasta the night before and I was like ‘this is good, this is really good food, I think this is the one.’”
The pasta paid off as Watson took home gold at the meet, winning the men’s 1500 meters with a time of 3:46.71, barely edging out Illinois’ second-place runner Colin Yandel.
“A lot of things went really well for us,” head coach Darren Gauson said. “Obviously George [Watson] with [his time and] all those other guys ran really well with the 1500. We got, like, five guys in the top eight of the MVC.”
Watson admittedly tried something different by trying to run as fast and as hard as he could out of the gate. Ultimately, his strategy worked about as well as it possibly could have.
“I saw this race at Illinois as a good opportunity to see what I could learn and basically try something new,” Watson said. “Normally, I try to run races tactically smart, and on this occasion, I deliberately didn’t. I just went from the gun and just started right behind the pacer and then tried to slither through on the inside and basically just ran hard gun to tape rather than trying to win the race.”
Also in the top ten for the men’s 1500m were sixth place finisher junior Max Dietrich, graduate Alec Danner in eighth, and graduate Matt Aho in tenth.
In the women’s 1500 meters, there were three top eight finishers as well. Freshman Peyton Schieppe led the group with 4:29.53 to come in third, followed by freshmen Kaitlyn Sheppard in seventh and Trixie Wraith in eighth.
“[It was the] first race for [Wraith] and she ran an eight second PR,” Gauson said.
Schieppe was able to be motivated just by running alongside her teammates, as she was able to finish the race with a flourish.
“I think just being with my team, running with them, having this meet and just doing our best with what we’ve done in workouts I think contributes to our success,” Schieppe said.
Freshman Leah Thames also showed out by running a 24.95 in the women’s 200 meters which is good for the third-fastest time in Bradley history.
Bradley is currently in the mix at several meets this weekend with the largest action taking place at the Bryan Clay Invitational in Azusa, California, and the Mt. SAC Relays in Torrance, California.
