Track & Field Wraps Up Trip To Texas

SAN MARCOS, Texas – The Central Michigan track & field team wrapped up its trip to Texas on Saturday with a number of solid finishes against strong competition at the Texas State Bobcat Invitational.

Five Chippewas posted a total of six top-20 places, including freshman Alyssa Vandegriff, who tied for 10^th in the high jump at 1.55 meters.

CMU's Hayley Manners and Madi Mandelke each turned in an 11^th-place finish, Manners in the triple jump (11.44 meters) and Mandelke in the 800-meter run (2:20.20).

Two Chippewas, Peyton Korytkowski and Vandegriff, finished 15^th and 19^th, respectively, in the 100-meter hurdles. Korytkowski finished in 14.93 seconds; Vandegriff in 15.38. CMU's Mohogany Wells finished 20^th in the shot put (11.03).

Korytkowski is a freshman while the other four Chippewas are sophomores.

The Chippewas partook in both the Bobcat Invitational and the Texas Relays in Austin. Both were three-day events and the highlights from CMU came from Wells, who won the hammer throw on Thursday; Kasey Staley, who tied for first in the pole vault on Friday; and Erin Howard, who won the discus on Friday.

In some cases, CMU student-athletes competed in both meets.

"We learned a lot of lessons," CMU coach Jenny Swieton said. "We competed some people for the third day in a row (on Saturday) and they did well in the race or the event that they were in at the time."

Competing for three days was a good experience for the Chippewas, Swieton said, particularly in light of the fact that all but one – the Mid-American Conference Championships – of CMU's competitions during the indoor season were contested in a single day.

"It's really important for them to get that experience of competing for two, three days in a row," she said. "It was a really good experience for everybody especially since our team is so young. Some people have never in their life ever done that before.

"For a lot of our student-athletes, they got better competitive-wise through the weekend. It was a good experience for us."

The Chippewas are scheduled to go to the Louisville Invitational on April 2-3. They will join a five-team field that includes the host Cardinals, Notre Dame, DePaul and Ball State.

"It's only five teams but it's going to be solid competition," Swieton said.

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Players Mentioned

Erin Howard

Peyton Korytkowski

Madi Mandelke

Hayley Manners

Kasey Staley

Alyssa Vandegriff

Mohogany Wells