The Purple Aces runners had a strong showing at the PNC Bank Bellarmine Classic hosted by the Knights on Friday. Three new records were set by UE while the 4×400 relay teams all update their previous records from earlier in the season. The men’s relay team of Austin Liversgowdy (Florence, Ky. / Cooper HS), Raymond Felton III (Houston / Clear Brook HS), Alvaro Monfort (Castile Y Leon, Spain), and Cedrik Flipo (Beloil, Quebec, Canada) finished 4th. It improved the previous record by over three seconds at 3:19.68. While the women’s relay team of Taylor Johnson (Evansville, Ind. / Reitz HS), Eilen Brenne (Skien, Norway), Nayla Martin (Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec, Canada), and Nicole Prauchner (Neuhofen an der Ybbs, Austria) improved their time by five seconds with a time of 3:58.59.
But the first record of the meet broken for the Aces came from sophomore Kate Walke (Batesville, Ind. / Oldenburg Academy) in the 60-meter hurdles. Walke ran a sub-10-second hurdle at 9.81 to break the 2018 record set by Samantha Bittner. Flipo continued to break decades-old records in his second meet of the season, setting a new men’s 800-meter record that hadn’t been touched since 1983. The freshman runner completed the 800-meter in 1:52.86 for sixth place among 55 finishers. Evansville’s final record of the day came from the hometown kid as Johnson added a third program record to her belt in her brief career. Johnson set a new mark for the 200-meter sprint at 25.39, taking over a second off the 2022 record.
On the men’s side in Louisville, nine runners set new personal bests starting with junior Antwaun Powell (Ringgold, Ga. / Heritage HS) in the 60-meter dash at 7.61 seconds. The only other sprint PR at the Bellarmine Classic came for Liversgowdy in the 200-meter race with a time of 22.92 seconds. Four runners set new PRs in the 800-meter race along with Flipo. Monfort and Rafael Rodriguez (Segovia, Spain) finished in the Top 10 with times of 1:54.13 and 1:54.53. Jakub Nowicki (Poznan, Poland) and Tommaso Losma (Lombardia, Italy) PR’s in the 800 came at times of 1:56.69 and 1:59.69. The last PR on Friday for the UE men came in the mile race for Samuel Lea (Worchester, England) with a time of 4:20.98.
The women also had multiple PRs during the Bellarmine Classic with eight throughout the day. Similar to the men’s team, the Aces women had multiple 800-meter PR results from Brenne at 2:14.44, Kalina Urbaniak (Suchy Las, Poland) at 2:15.69, and Martin with a time of 2:17.86. All three finished in the Top 15 in the event while Brenne led the pack in fifth place. Two runners also set PRs in the mile as Sonja Inzinger (Mautern an der Donau, Austria) ran in 5:05.99 and Kyndall Anthis (Pakota, Ind. / Princeton Community HS) ran a 5:39.92. The women’s final PR of the day was Prauchner’s in the 400-meter race as she finished in under a minute at 59.61 seconds.
