The Event... The Northwestern College track and field teams will make their outdoor season debut this Saturday as they compete at the 3rd Annual Vance Butler Invitational hosted by Augustana College. The event will be run at Howard Wood Field and will begin at 10:00 am on Saturday morning (April 5). Follow along on the Augustana website at the following link: Vikings website.
The Field... The Red Raiders are one of 12 schools who will have athletes competing this weekend. Other competing teams include: Augustana, Concordia-Moorhead, Dakota State, Dakota Wesleyan, Dordt, Minnesota State, North Dakota, University of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, South Dakota State.
Red Raider Notes... Northwestern is coming off a very successful indoor season in which three individual athletes and one relay team earned All-American honors. Laura Jacobson (1000m), Olivia Johnson (1 mile) and Charity Miles (5000m) all placed third in their respective events and took home the national honor. The distance medley team of Jacobson, Johnson, Jess Regan and Stephanie Powell placed fifth and earned All-American status. Kaitlin Beaver (High Jump) and Dan Walhof (5000m) also competed at nationals. As a team, Northwestern placed ninth overall, their best ever finish at nationals. Since that time, Jon Woehl (Ankeny, Iowa) set a new school record and met the NAIA qualifying mark for the marathon at the Midland Lutheran College Half-Marathon. The senior placed seventh with a school-record time of 1:12:52, just over four minutes behind the first place runner (Andrew VanNorden-SDSU). The automatic qualifying time is 1:15:00. Jack Peterson (Walcott, Iowa) finished 19th and met the provisional qualifying mark with a time of 1:16.37.
Next up... Northwestern will host the Red Raider Open next Saturday, beginning at 10:00 am.
