With the indoor track season in full swing, Bradley’s track and field team split up and participated in two separate meets this past weekend.
The Braves competed at the Grand Valley State University Big Meet on Friday, Feb. 11 in Allendale, Michigan, as well as at the Iowa State Classic in Ames, Iowa, on Feb. 11-12.
The GVSU Big Meet featured 22 personal bests from Bradley athletes, including a school record in the women’s 200 meters, which was set by freshman Amiyah Davis, with a time of 25.39. On the men’s side, freshman Rodrigo Alvarez Gonzalez finished third with a time of 8:35.66 in his heat in the 3000-meter race.
Record-setting times from Bradley runners set the tone for the team’s performance in the Iowa State Classic. The Braves were well-represented, racing eight athletes over the course of the two-day meet. The women’s team brought four freshmen: Julia Nielsen, Sophia McDonnell, Ashley Maguire and Nicola Jansen, and all of them impressed on Iowa State’s Harry Hoak Track.
Nielsen broke Bradley’s school record for the women’s 800-meter race with a mark of 2:08.71, notching the eighth-fastest time at the event.
“Everybody was so good, a lot of personal bests for everyone which inspired me to also do a [personal best] the next day,” Nielsen said. “My teammates gave me a lot of motivation, and it was a good race.”
McDonnell and Maguire excelled in the 3000-meter race. Placing fourth overall, McDonnell’s performance (9:30.52) was complemented by Maguire’s 9:48.46 mark, 16th-place among all heats. Jansen’s effort in the women’s 5000-meter race (16:11.99) marked the Missouri Valley Conference’s fastest time in the event since 2016, which was good for 10th overall at the Iowa State Classic.
Junior George Watson and sophomore Will Smith, as well as freshmen Max Dietrich and Michael Rebello, represented the Bradley men’s side in four separate events. Watson made history in the 3000-meter race, recording the second-best time ever by a Brave, crossing the line at 8:04.46. As a transfer from the United Kingdom, Watson’s race experience in Ames fulfilled a dream.
“I’ve watched videos of these meets and now I’m there in this arena,” Watson said. “It felt a bit dreamy to be in the races with these massive colleges, so I’m in such a positive mood at the start line.”
Watson felt that this race was much better than when he and the Braves traveled to Iowa State for the Cyclone Open recently.
“It was just so smooth,” Watson said. “I raced three weeks previously and felt a bit flat during the same 3K on the same track, so it was nice to come out on the same track, running the same distance, and feel really good. Everything clicked, it was a very natural race.”
Smith placed 32nd overall in the 800-meter race (1:54.93), and Dietrich’s time of 4:05.02 earned him a seventh-place finish in the mile run. In the 5000 meters, Rebello won his heat with a time of 14:33.40 and placed 19th overall.
As the indoor track and field season comes to a close in the next few weeks, the Braves have two more dates marked on their calendar: February 18 at the Illini Classic in Champaign, and February 27-28 at the MVC Indoor Championship in Chicago. Gauson said he doesn’t expect to send many runners down to the Illini Classic in preparation for the bigger meet occurring just days later.
“That’s a weekend where we tend to give most of our Missouri Valley people the weekend off to train and prepare for the championship,” Gauson said. “We’re going to take around nine people there, so the ones who maybe aren’t on our travel roster to go to the conference meets, as well as two or three that had COVID or people that had a setback with an injury.”
