’Dogs prepare for MIAA meet

The men's and women's track teams competed Friday at the Mizzou Collegiate Challenge in Columbia in their last meet before the MIAA Conference indoor meet this weekend in Warrensburg, Mo.

High marks of the day were junior Anne Ratermann winning the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:58.99, breaking the women's school record.  Junior Jennifer Zweifel and sophomore Rachel McCarroll set provisional marks in the triple jump and shot put, respectively. In addition, senior Shania Dochterman won the 400-meter dash with a time of 58.72.

"The whole idea at this meet is to get sharper going into the conference indoor meet," head coach John Cochrane said. "Some people had pretty good meets. Anne Ratermann had a good meet, Jennifer Zweifel did pretty well as did Rachel McCarroll, and Shania Dochterman did OK."

Ratermann said a team effort allowed her to break the school record.

"[Assistant] coach [Tim] Schwegler thought the record was within my range, so we decided to go for it," Ratermann said. "[Junior] Michelle Gronemeyer only ran the first 500 meters to set the pace for me, and she did a great job. And I had a lot of family and friends and former teammates there cheering me on, so all that encouragement gave me the boost I needed." Zweifel, who won the triple jump with a career-best 39-05.00 and finished second in the long jump with a mark of 18-06.50, said being able to work outside this past week probably helped her achieve her results Friday.

"We were able to go outside and jump into the sand this week instead of the pole-vaulting mats we use indoors," Zweifel said. "You can't really work on a lot of technical stuff on the last part of the jump on the mats, and I needed some improvement on jumping into the sand. I still need to work on that, unfortunately, but being able to jump in the sand was nice."

Standouts on the men's side were seniors Demetrius Lavant, who finished third in the long jump, and John Venner, who placed third in the 3,000-meter run.

"Demetrius has jumped pretty well, but he's had some fouls," Cochrane said. "He has the ability to do well in conference, but he's going to have to get the good jumps and make them be legal. [Sophomore] Joey Walls has run well in the indoor season, and he has a chance to score in the 3,000."

Walls finished fourth in the mile Friday with a career-best time of 4:22.01.

Preparations are underway for the conference meet for both the men and the women, Cochrane said.

"Our goal at practice this week is to try and do a few things with very high quality and not much volume," Cochrane said. "On the field side, we're looking to try and work out some technical things jump-wise."

Zweifel said she and the team were excited for the upcoming meet.

"This meet is constantly on my mind," Zweifel said. "I don't even want to study for classes because all I want to do is think about track. I'm just so excited because there's going to be a lot more competition there than what we've been seeing. I'd like to place in my events, but it's going to be difficult because the competition is so stiff."

Cochrane said he was most concerned with how the teams competed no matter the end results.

"When they call your name, and it's time to go on the field or step on the line, you have to compete," Cochrane said. "And if you do that in a conference meet, you may not score a lot of points, but you'll feel better than if you just go out and participate. It's all about competing. It's all about beating people. At the conference meet, it's a big, old, nasty war."