CALVIN KNIGHT SPORTS REPORT FOR MAY 20, 2015 (Part Two)
MEN'S AND WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD
Track and Field Prepares for Nationals
By John Leerar
Canton, NY- The national qualifiers on the Calvin Track and Field team spent the day before the national meet at St. Lawrence University preparing for its events.
Six Knights will be competing in the events on Thursday. Calvin's lone field entrant is senior Ben de Waal Malefyt (Haledon, NJ/Eastern Christian HS), who will be competing in the discus.
Running the 1500 meter prelims will be senior Kate Ardinger (Elmhurst, IL/Timothy Christian HS). The Knights will have two entrants in the 3000 meter steeplechase prelims in junior McKenzie Diemer (Caledonia/South Christian HS) and senior Steven Haagsma (Wyoming/Calvin Christian HS).
Ending the day will be two Knights in the 10,000 meter finals. Senior Sarah Danner (Watkins Glen, NY/Charles Dickerson HS) and junior Ethan Anderson (Stillwater, MN/Stillwater Area HS) will both be running the 6.2 mile distance.
The Knights spent the morning on Wednesday doing final preparations for their events tomorrow. Following that, there was plenty of free time before the banquet at night. Many of the student-athletes took advantage of this.
Since Calvin is staying at nearby Clarkson University, some took the opportunity to walk through the beautiful campus and see some of the sights in this secluded upstate New York neighborhood.
At night, there was the NCAA banquet. The keynote speaker was Joan Benoit Samuelson, a former teammate of assistant coach Brian Diemer on the 1984 Olympic team and winner of the gold medal in the inaugural women's marathon in the games that year.
Benoit, who at the age of 57 still runs marathons in under three hours, congratulated the participants on choosing DIII athletics. A former DIII student-athlete at Bowdoin College in Maine, Benoit stressed the importance of passion and balance in a student-athlete's life and how Division III schools provide that.
She stressed three lessons to take away from her speech and from the weekend. The first was that you can't run anyone else's race in life. She stressed not comparing oneself to others and believing in oneself.
The second was that there are no shortcuts. It may be harder to take the long way around but there is no substitute for hard work.
The third was to never look back. She shared that she has never looked back in a race and has never dropped out of a race and feels more pride about that than any medal.
After the banquet concluded, the Knights headed back to Clarkson University for a night of rest before the beginning of the meet.
The first event on the calendar is the discus, which begins at 1:30.
Received on Wed May 20 23:28:35 2015
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