Aces track and field has final tune-up before MVC’s at Indiana State Open

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – The University of Evansville track and field team will participate in its final meet before the conference championship of its indoor season on Saturday.

After a busy weekend in Nashville and Greencastle, the Purple Aces head up north to Indiana State for the Indiana State Open. UE is one of three Division 1 teams competing in the meet along with the Sycamores and Southern Indiana. Evansville will compete in most of the day’s events starting with field events at 11 a.m. and track events at 11:30.

Last weekend the Aces split their time at two different meets, the Music City Challenge in Nashville hosted by Vanderbilt, and the DePauw Indoor Invitational in Greencastle. Two program records fell at each meet, with both track records happening in Nashville and both field records at DePauw. In total, UE competed in 16 events across two days at both meets.

At the Music City Challenge, Evansville set two new track program records on Friday and Saturday. Freshman Rafael Rodriguez (Segovia, Spain) set a new program record in the mile at 4:14.58 on Friday while freshman Samuel Lea (Worchester, England) ran the 3000-meter race in 8:23.82, besting his former record by almost eight seconds on Saturday.

Two field records were then broken on Saturday at DePauw by sophomore Kate Walke (Batesville, Ind. / Oldenburg Academy), who beat her record from the week before in the 60-meter hurdles. Walke completed the event in 9.47 seconds to take third place in the finals. Later in the day, graduate thrower Zach Dove (Princeton, Ind. / Princeton Community HS) broke his former weight throw record from 2023 by 15 centimeters at 17.83 meters to take the top spot in the event.

Events for the Aces begin at 11 a.m. with the women’s weight throw.