The Purple Aces had high finishes in their first meet of the outdoor season
MURRAY, Ky. – The University of Evansville track and field team completed its first meet of the 2024 outdoor season with two top-six team finishes.
The Purple Aces saw their men’s team finish in third place at the Margaret Simmons Invitational with 101 points while the women’s team finished sixth with 40 points. The men’s team stayed in the Top Three on Saturday thanks to strong finishes in five races and the lone field event of the day. The women’s team also had multiple Top Five finishes on the final day including the 1500-meter and 4×400-meter relay races.
“This weekend being the first outdoor meet of the season, our goal was simply for this young team to gain some much-needed experience. This has been a common theme of our track and field season with many of our newcomers not accustomed to the Midwest and its unfavorable weather conditions this time of year. We wanted to come in and execute our races to put ourselves in the best position for podium finishes.
“I think we learned a lot this weekend to take back into our training this next week. Our veteran leadership among our throwers was on full display this weekend, earning some huge team points. This meet gives us great momentum to move forward into the rest of the outdoor season!”
UE earned podium finishes in the men’s 800-meter, 1500-meter, and the women’s 1500-meter races. Freshman Tomasso Losma (Lombardia, Italy) and Kalina Urbaniak (Suchy Las, Poland) had the two first-place finishes of the day for Evansville. Losma ran a 1:56.84 in the 800-meter race, just beating out a St. Louis runner by a second. Urbaniak ran a 4:45.01, closely followed by teammate Nicole Prauchner at 4:45.50 for second place.
Rafael Rodriguez (Segovia, Spain) also earned a podium finish in the men’s 1500-meter race, placing third with a time of 4:00.10.
Along with big podium finishes, the Aces broke three separate program records on Saturday. Junior thrower Kaitlyn Sansone (Fairfield, Ohio / Mercy McAuley HS) broke a five-year-old record in the women’s javelin at 31.15 meters. UE’s other two program records came on the track as freshman Eilén Brenne (Skien, Norway) ran a 1:00.07 in the 400-meter race for seventh. Brenne was also part of the other program record in the women’s 4×400-meter relay race. Brenne along with Urbaniak, Prachner, and Nayla Martin (Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec, Canada) ran a 4:03.02 to place fifth and replace the previous record set in 2019.
All of Evansville’s relay teams had a successful Saturday with both men’s relay teams placing third starting with the 4×100-meter relay. The team of José Ocampo (Monterrey Nuevo Léon, Mexico), Austin Liversgowdy (Florence, Ky. / Cooper HS), Connor Shin (Bloomington, Ind. / Bloomington North HS), and Raymond Felton III (Houston / Clear Brook HS) finished the relay in 43.8 seconds. The 4×400-relay team of Ocampo, Shin, Jakub Nowicki (Poznan, Poland), and Woody Burrell (Cedarburg, Wis. / Cedarburg HS) finished third with a time of 3:29.35.
Other notable results on the track for the men included Felton III 10th place finish in the men’s 200-meter race with a time of 22.30 seconds. The men also had Top 10 finishes in the 400-meter race as Liversgowdy finished seventh and Ocampo finished ninth with times of 52.10 and 52.25 seconds respectively. In the lone field event of the day, graduate thrower Jaden Hayes (Huningtonburg, Ind. / Southridge HS) and junior thrower Preston Riggs (Ft. Branch, Ind. / Gibson Southern HS) placed fifth and eighth in the men’s javelin. Hayes came just shy of a personal best with a throw of 43.95 meters while Riggs threw 39.51 meters’.
