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MSU track and field looks toward outdoor season as weathers warms

March 29, 2017
From left to right, distance senior Sherod Hardt, sprint and hurdles senior David Washington, distance sophomore Justine Kiprotich and distance sophomore Dan Sims pose with their medals for a portrait during the Big Ten Men's and Women's Indoor Track and Field Championship on Feb. 24 at SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
From left to right, distance senior Sherod Hardt, sprint and hurdles senior David Washington, distance sophomore Justine Kiprotich and distance sophomore Dan Sims pose with their medals for a portrait during the Big Ten Men's and Women's Indoor Track and Field Championship on Feb. 24 at SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio. —

The MSU track and field team kicked off the outdoor season in North Carolina last weekend at the Raleigh Relays.

The Spartans had numerous impressive performances, including the 4x1500-meter relay team of freshman Annie Fuller, junior Kennedy Beazley, sophomore Erin McDonald and freshman Dillion McClintock, who took first and broke the MSU school record with a time of 18:28.87.

The indoor season didn’t go as well as the Spartans hoped, but redshirt-junior Katelyn Daniels said the team has a chance to use it as motivation for the outdoor season.

“I don’t think that we were exactly where we wanted to be after Indoor Big Tens, but no one on this team is a quitter and no one looks at it as a defeat or anything like that nor should they,” Daniels said. “There was a lot of promising stuff that happened this winter, but I think the most important thing we do is we see everything that happened in the winter as a motivation for the outdoor season, and we have a lot of people that are showing tremendous progress. I think that as the outdoor season continues, we’re only going to get stronger because we’re getting more and more competitions under our belt and things like that.”

In the first day of the two-day meet last weekend, Daniels broke her own shot put best with a throw of 16.40 meters breaking her previous record of 16.06.

“It was awesome because the indoor season was not quite how I’d hoped it would be, but we were doing the right things in practice and kind of hitting bigger marks in practice than I was when I was competing. So it was just nice to actually see it play out in a competition,” Daniels said on breaking her record.

Redshirt-junior Tim Ehrhardt said the men’s side of the outdoor season has the potential for a spectacular season.

“I think for Big Tens, I think 11th didn’t really represent us for the guys side,” Ehrhardt said. “We’ve been doing really well in the indoor season. We had a bunch of guys coming in really high marks and they just went to Big Tens and things just didn’t come through. But I think outdoor, the guys have potential to get top five if everything goes well.”

Ehrhardt is currently nursing a hamstring injury after sustaining it during the indoor season.

As a result of his injury, Ehrhardt is unable to do any other events besides the pole vault.

“My goal is to get as close as I can to get that national title in the decathlon,” he said. “That’s what I want to get. I want to get a national title in the decathlon. So far, I’ve gotten a couple of events to go pretty well this season. I got pole vault to go pretty well. I need to get some of my other events going. I’ve been struggling because I’ve had this hamstring injury, but in practice, I’ve been getting a lot of things to go really well, so my goal is to get as close as possible to get the national title in the decathlon.”

Director of track and field and cross country Walt Drenth said he is confident MSU will have a superior outdoor season than the indoor season.

“We do well in the long throws — the discus and the hammer,” Drenth said. “Tim should be healthy enough to be in the multi. If not, he’s still a national class pole vaulter. Asya Reynolds will be better outside in the multi on the women’s side. We’ve already got a number of people qualified for the first round in the nationals in the distance events based on what we did last weekend at North Carolina State. We added javelin throwers, we added the intermediate hurdle events that we’re good at. Taylor Mullins, David Washington, Alec Waiter — those people will score, so I’m pretty confident that we’ll be a better team outside.”

The Spartans will host their first outdoor meet of the season this Friday and Saturday in the Auto-Owners Insurance Spartan Invitational beginning at noon on Friday. 

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