Three Knights came home this weekend as champions in their respective events. A group of the Knights’ track and field team headed to the University of Missouri to participate in the Missouri Relays.

Another troop of Knights runners were supposed to head to Rock Island, Ill. for the Augie Invite, but due to a spring snow storm the meet was cancelled.

Kevin Balster also came home a champion as he and Brian Chenoweth went one-two in the 5,000-meter run. Both also provisionally qualified for the national meet, finishing with times of 14:31 and 14:39 respectively.

“We were the only Div. III school that appeared at that meet and for those two young men to go to that meet and finish one-two is awesome,” head coach Marcus Newsom said.

Hannah Baker brought home three top finishes for the Knights. She finished third in the 200- meter dash with a time of 25.32, fourth in the 400-meter dash with a time of 57.21 and was part of a third place 4x100-meter relay team.

While there were no team scores kept, the Knights came home with 26 top-ten finishes; 14 of which came from the men and 12 of which came from the women.

“You look at how we did overall, finishing many runners in the top ten, it was just a solid performance by our kids,” Newsom said. “We need that level of competition and our athletes responded extremely well.”

The Knights will host the Wartburg Select this weekend, April 4 and 5, with events scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m.

“It’s going to be a great meet, in fact it will be one of the top Div. III meets this year,” Newsom said.
Newsom thinks the meet will be a tough one, with the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse women, Monmouth, St. Thomas and the University of Wisconsin – Platteville competing.

On the men’s side of things, Monmouth finished second at the national indoor meet while Platteville tied for third, with the Knights finishing in a tie for 12th. The women finished second at indoor nationals but La Crosse finished in a tie for fourth while the St. Thomas finished in seventh.