'Golds take fifth place
Men's track and field team place top five at Pointer Qualifier
Andy Weise
Issue date: 2/27/06 Section: Sports
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The 'Golds came into the meet ranked No. 7 in the nation according to the Everything Track and Field national poll.
It was no surprise that the No. 1 UW-Oshkosh came out on top of the Pointer Qualifier. They won the meet overall with a combined score of 152.
UW-Stevens Point came in second with 125.5 followed by UW-Platteville and UW-Stout, which beat the Blugolds by fewer than 10 points each with scores of 77.5 and 72.5, respectively.
"(This weekend) went pretty good, we wanted to beat Stout," freshman Wes Fischer said. "It didn't work out the way we wanted to. We didn't have everything together but we're confident we'll get them back at conference."
The Blugolds were held without a first place position in all of the events, but junior Joey Veriga was able to place second in the 800-meter run with a time of 1:57:14.
Behind Veriga in the 800, Fischer finished in fourth at 1:57:43, a time he said was a personal record.
"I was pretty pleased with how I did," he said. "My coach was satisfied so I was pretty glad (with my performance)."
A number of other athletes were able to finish fourth in their respective events.
Junior Nick Aliota took 8.05 in the 55-meter hurdles and junior Adam Koger finished with a time of 50.70 in the 400-meter run. In the longer runs, sophomore Ted Lillie finished at 8:53.94 in the 3,000-meter run and freshman Mark Sanders clocked in at 16:20.02 in the 5,000-meter run.
Freshman Grant Haugan finished fifth in both the long jump and triple jump with scores of 6.20 meters and 12.83 meters, respectively. Senior Brent Tice placed fifth in the shot put event with a toss of 14.67 meters.
The team's big meet is this upcoming weekend when they will travel back to Stevens Point for the WIAC Indoor Conference championships.
Fischer said the team is hoping to finish at least in fourth or fifth, but they also are looking forward to the outdoor season beginning soon.
"We're all doing our best, but I think we'll be a lot stronger in the outdoor part of the season," Fischer said. "We have some new guys coming on in the spring. We have five or six people from wrestling or others sports coming and they're good runners."
The young team is hoping to build on successes they have experienced during the indoor portion of the season and translate that into more success in the upcoming outdoor season.
"We're a young team made up of a lot of freshmen," Fischer said. "We're feeling pretty good (right now). (Coach Chip Schneider) is pleased with our attitude. We're going to be good for years to come."