March 7, 2007

Thinclads Race Well; Have Weekend off Before Home Meet

THIS WEEK: The Pacific Lutheran track team has the week off in order to prepare for the Pacific Lutheran Invitational. The home PLU invite will take place on March 17, and will be held on the campus track.

ICEBREAKER RECAP: The Lutes preformed very well in their first outdoor meet of the season last weekend at the Linfield Icebreaker. The top performance of the day was when Freshman Katie Choate won the 1500-meter run. She lead from start to finish and crossed the line with a lifetime personal record (PR) of 4:54.58. Choate also ran the 800 later that day in a time of 2:29.67. In the distances junior Lauren McDonald ran the 5000-meter run in a conference qualifying time of 19:25.12. The throwing events saw two different Lutes in three different events, Taylor Hacker in the discus (96-02) and hammer (121-01) and Karin Hatch in the Javelin (115-01). Hatch’s toss of 115-01 was just enough to put her in 25th place on the all-time top 25 list. The men’s side saw a number of outstanding performances. James Burnett took second in the 30-man field in the 100-meter dash (11.03). The middle distances events were packed with Lutes. The 1500-meter run had five PLU athletes with Mark Manske running the fastest time of the day (4:13.13) for the Lutes. Manske won his flight in come from behind fashion and was able to knock eight seconds off his PR. Sophomore Daniel Hibbard placed sixth in the 400-meter hurdles when he ran a time of 59.92. Hibbard’s mark qualified him for the conference championship meet. The PLU throwers had a grand showing as two athletes cracked the all-time top 25 list. Both the marks came in the javelin as Clint Ludlow (165-07) and Doug Rickabaugh (160-03) placed 17th and 25th on the top 25 list respectively.

CONFERENCE MARKS: A total of ten athletes earned marks that qualified them for the Northwest Conference meet this past weekend. Eight women and two men punched their tickets to the meet, which takes place on April 20-21. The meet will be hosted by the Loggers of Puget Sound.

HOME SWEET HOME: The Pacific Lutheran Invitational will be the first home track meet for the Lutes in three years. Prior to the two year absence PLU was host to the Salzman Invitational which attracted some of the top track and field teams from Northwest.

- PLU -