CSC Academic All-District® Cross Country and Track & Field Release
Senior Geoffrey Allen, junior Dylan Garretson, senior Luke Henke, sophomore Eric Johnson, and senior Will McMichael were among the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District® honorees for men's cross country and track & field, as announced by the organization on Wednesday afternoon.
Allen lettered for Wooster's cross country team during his debut season by being part of the Fighting Scots' 12-harrier contingent at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championships. Allen covered the championship-length conference course in 34:52.6 that year. As a senior, Allen's top championship-length time of 34:03.1 came at Wilmington College's JennaStrong Fall Classic. He competed as a miler during the indoor track & field season as a senior, with the top time of 6:02.26 coming at the Kenyon College Invitational. During the outdoor track & field season, Allen specialized in the 1,500 meters with his top time of 5:10.69 coming in the dual meet with NCAC rival Denison University.
The aspiring Ph.D. candidate in sociology applied John Ogbu's cultural-ecological theory of minority student experiences to higher education for his Independent Study. The anthropology and Chinese studies major was a Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Think Tank Foundation policy research intern last summer where he collected news sources and government media for comparative analysis. Allen was a sophomore research assistant on campus where he investigated and critiqued the 1949 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American diversity and inclusion initiatives in the outdoor wilderness. Allen worked as an intern with the Admissions department on campus and wrote for the Wooster Voice student newspaper.
Garretson became the first men's indoor track & field All-American in program history with a fourth-place mark of 16 feet, 2.75 inches, which is the program's indoor record. He qualified for the Div. III Championships for the fourth time this spring and tied for 16th-place at 15 feet, 7 inches. The four-time all-region performer upped his outdoor pole vault school record to 16 feet, 4.75 inches this spring and collected his fifth NCAC pole vault title in what marked his 31st collegiate pole vault victory./
Garretson, who has served in the Ohio National Guard since his senior year of high school, is a member of the prestigious 122nd Ohio Army National Guard Band. He is a member of the Rogue Hollows Regiment Drum and Bulge corps, the Wooster Symphonic Band, the Wooster Community Band, the Wooster Mercury Brass Quintet, the Scot Marching Band, and the Wooster Jazz Band. During COVID, Garretson was on active duty with the Ohio National Guard serving in Ohio hospitals and originally broke the program's indoor school record right after coming back to campus from active duty service at Parma Community Hospital. Garretson is a music education major and hopes to be a high school band director upon graduation.
Henke's career haul sits at three All-Ohio and two All-NCAC honors. He swept the 2023 All-Ohio high jump titles after clearing a collegiate-best 6 feet, 6.75 inches at the indoor meet and 6 feet, 4 inches at the outdoor championships. Henke hit 6 feet, 6 inches at the 2023 NCAC Indoor Track & Field Championships for his second all-conference laurel.
Henke, who is planning on returning for the spring 2024 semester through the Wooster Plus program, created a linear regression model based on Dean Oliver's four factors to predict NBA games for his Independent Study. The mathematics major was a business analyst intern at Great American Insurance Group last summer. There, Henke worked to create and maintain data flows, created and validated financial reports, and performed tasks to help support efficient business practices for the company. Henke is a member of the campus chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, the national mathematics honor society, and is captain of the club volleyball team.
Johnson has been a mainstay in the top-seven for Wooster's cross country team as a two-year letterwinner. He was Wooster's No. 4 at the 2022 NCAA Div. III Great Lakes Regional Championships, with the time of 28:03.6 marking a season-best. In 2022, Johnson lowered his collegiate-best championships-length cross country time to 26:48.3 at the regional meet and he was just outside the top-50 at the conference championships. Johnson's outdoor season ended with a career-best time of 15:49.06 in the 5,000 meters, with that clip coming at the NCAC Championships.
The physics major worked as a sophomore research assistant where he tested hypothesis of the inside-out formation of disks within galaxies. He used python to create images of individual galaxies and ran them through a premade program. Additionally, Johnson tested James Webb Space Telescope image compatibility with programs on campus. The junior-to-be previously researched interevent time of avalanches focusing on the statistical distribution as a research assistant within the Physics Department, and that research was chosen for five separate academic presentations. Johnson works as a homework tutor for introductory physics courses at the College and is a peer mentor in APEX, the College's center for Advising, Planning, and Experiential Learning.
McMichael capped his standout career at the NCAA Div. III Championships, where he placed 13th in the 400 meters with a time of 47.53. The two-time NCAC Athlete of the Year won six events at the NCAC Championships over his career, including the 400 meters (47.62) and 4x400 relay (3:28.61) at the most recent outdoor championships. He helped the Scots to its first outdoor conference relay championship since 2000 this spring and graduated with program records in the indoor (49.19) and outdoor 400 meters (47.45), the outdoor 4x400 relay (3:28.61), the indoor 4x200 relay (1:32.15), and the indoor 4x400 relay (3:24.79).
Wooster's returning Academic All-American® spent last summer studying the effects of exercise on sleep and obesity in rodents at the University of Illinois Chicago. He previously spent two summers working in the Rosenkranz Lab within the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago, Illinois. As a researcher, McMichael studied the dopamine one receptor's influence on social behavior in adult and adolescent rats. He also studied stress in rats and induction of pro-inflammatory state and amygdala neuronal and microglia activation. The neuroscience major conducted a synthetic biology project where he developed a fluorescent reporter for acetylcholine in yeast for his Independent Study. McMichael predicted that fluorescence would be both reversible upon antagonist binding and dependent on the concentration of the agonist. McMichael performed dissection and dissociation of brain tissues for cell culture and prepared samples for immunohistochemical staining and confocal imaging as a research assistant at the College. His research was selected for presentations at the Society for Neuroscience Convention and he has presented research as several other academic conferences.
Wooster's Academic All-District® selections are on the Academic All-America® ballot, which is voted on by CSC members in advance of the announcement of the Academic All-America® team on June 29. Starting with the 2022-23 academic year, all eligible nominees submitted by member schools earn Academic All-District® status. Nominees were voted to the Academic All-District® Team in previously years and those winners advanced to the Academic All-America® ballot.