WOOSTER, Ohio – Spearheaded by relay dominance, The College of Wooster women's track and field team won Saturday's Fighting Scots Invitational inside the Gault Recreation Center, while the men's team took second in the six-team field.
Sophomore Athena Tharenos, junior Haley Bloom, first-year Igna Mendez, and first-year Dylan Kretchmar scored the Scots' first relay win with a 13:03.61 in the distance medley relay. Senior Maya Vasta, sophomore Drew Patterson, first-year Daysia Hargrave, and senior Claudia Partridge kept the momentum rolling with the winning time of 1:50.51 in the 4x200 relay. In the meet's finale, Vasta, Bloom, Tharenos, and Mendez went 4:21.89 to take the 4x400 relay.
Elsewhere, Partridge notched wins in the high jump (5 feet, 3 inches) and 400 meters (1:05.41), while Tharenos broke the tape in the 800 meters at 2:27.55. Both Partridge and Tharenos finished the day as triple winners for the Scots. Senior distance ace Isabelle Hoover coasted to a first-place finish in the 3,000 meters, crossing at 10:35.09, the winning time by nearly 30 seconds. Junior Morgan Kromer pole vaulted 10 feet, 6 inches, with that rounding out the first-place showings for the Scots' women.
Also picking up key points were senior Kayla Bertholf (second, mile, 5:35.55) and Vasta (second, 200 meters, 27.52). Hargrave added a second-place time of 9.78 in the 60-meter hurdles, where the Scots had four scorers.
On the men's side, Wooster had the top two finishers in the pole vault. Sophomore Dylan Garretson clinched first-place after successfully clearing 13 feet, 11.25 inches on his first try at the progression, and that enabled him to have a go at Jeff Waugh's 1989 school record of 15 feet. Garretson, who surpassed Waugh's record in practice leading up to this week's meet, was unable to replicate that on Saturday. Classmate Davis Patterson cleared 12 feet 11.5 inches on his first try at the progression to tie for second-place.
First-year Ben Nichols, senior Nick Scherson, first-year Drew Robertson, and senior Alex DeLong brought home Wooster's other top finish. That came in the distance medley relay, where the quartet stopped the clock at 10:46.75.
Junior Luke Henke was the runner-up in the high jump (6 feet, 2.75 inches), as was first-year Isaiah Kidd in the long jump (21 feet, 2.75 inches).
Wooster logged 147.33 points on the women's side, 27 clear of runner-up Wittenberg University. Denison University's 139.5 men's points ranked comfortably ahead of Wooster's 119.
Next, Wooster and Denison are set to tangle in a dual meet at the Gault Recreation Center on Thursday, January 27. Field events start at 5 p.m. with track events to follow at 6:30 p.m.
landing page photo by Abbi Tarburton '22