Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

Winona State University's Newspaper since 1919

The Winonan

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Track and field confident after opening meets

Julia Feld / Winonan

This past weekend, Winona State University’s women’s track and field team traveled to University of Wisconsin—Stout for their second meet of the season.

The team is coming off a successful first meet against Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota the previous weekend, which signals the beginning of a rigorous season with more challenging meets quickly approaching.

Head track and field coach Mason Rebarchek said before the start of the meet that the team likes to begin the season with less intense meets.

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“We like to start our year with some smaller, low-key meets. That’s what this weekend will be– some early season meets to give everyone a chance to get out and compete,” Rebarchek said. “We start cranking it up with the higher level meets the following weekend.”

Hope Willenbrink, a sophomore at Winona State and second-year runner on the team, shares what the first meet of a season is like for the team.

“So far I’ve only run one meet at Saint Mary’s. It’s normally a pretty small meet so there’s not much competition for us. It’s normally a good starter meet for everyone, if you’re racing just to get one under your belt,” Willenbrink said. “That [meet] went well for everyone on the team so far. I feel like everyone thinks we already have a good setup for the rest of the season.”

While the meet itself is typically easy for most of the team, Rebarchek said training for indoor track meets puts heavy responsibility on his runners.

“Indoor track and field is a little weird. We train all of fall and then we have that first meet, then everyone goes home for Christmas break for a month. We send them home with workouts, and we come back a week before classes start, so we get one or two weeks of training in before getting back into our competition schedule,” Rebarchek said.

But Rebarchek is confident in the team’s progress so far and is excited for the season to really get going.

“It’s been great. [In the] early season we get to train for a long time and everyone’s in great shape and is excited to get out and compete and get the uniform on,” Rebarchek said. “I think our strongest event area is the throws, (shotput, discus, etc.), but we’re a pretty well-rounded team so I expect to see good things in every area.”

Willenbrink also shared her excitement for the season to get going full steam ahead, as well as for this past weekend’s meet.

“We have a lot of girls running at Stout, I know that the mile [run] is stacked with a lot of Winona runners, and it’s going to be a good competition between our teammates. I don’t know if Stout will have that much competition right away. I know that in the 800 we also have a lot of girls racing, so that will be a lot of good completion against each other,” Willenbrink said.

“Like I said, it’s early, the whole team hasn’t gotten to compete yet. This will really be the first weekend where the whole team is there,” Rebarchek said.

Commenting about the talents of the team as a whole, Willenbrink was just as confident as her coach regarding this past weekend’s meet.

“The throwers always do well, they always have most of the girls place. At Saint Mary’s we had about 17 people win their events. We’re spread out pretty evenly, Sprinters and jumpers too, they’re normally always up there too, placing-wise,” Willenbrink said.

Willenbrink placed second in the women’s 800m final against Stout, and overall the Warriors took first in nine events during the meet. Junior Raissa Hansen won the mile run with a time of 5:16.58, junior Olivia Fixsen won the 60-meter hurdles, and first-year student Kathleen Taylor won the shot put, currently placing her at 11th in the nation.

Senior Megan Seidl won both the 400- and 200-meter dashes, with junior Tamika Tucker winning the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.83 seconds. Sophomore Ali Johnson won the 800-meter run in 2:19.99, and first-year student Bailey Cronin, junior Karina Elford, first-year student Johnna Patterson and first-year student Amanda Wanie won the 400-meter relay with a time of 4:16.19. Senior Haley Renke reached 1.58 meters to win the high jump.

Winona State will be competing at another meet at Minnesota State University, Mankato on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 27-28.

By Julia Feld

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