1,600-meter relay squad enters the Hawkeye men’s record book
In a weekend full of personal records for Iowa men’s track, the 1,600 team rose above the rest.
Antonio Woodward and Raymonte Dow make an exchange in the 4×400 meter relay during the Larry Wieczorek Invitational meet in Iowa City, Iowa; Saturday Jan. 20, 2018. Their relay team finished second in the heat.
February 9, 2019
In a weekend full of competitive events and impressive marks, the Iowa men’s track team waited until the last event to mark its place in the record books.
The Hawkeye 1,600-meter relay team broke the school record in the event with a time of 3:04.76 to take third at the Tyson Invitational. The squad, consisting of Karayme Bartley, Antonio Woodard, Mar’Yea Harris, and Wayne Lawrence, broke the previous time which had been set in 2017 (3:04.94).
Iowa Director of Track and Field Joey Woody was happy with how his team capped off the weekend.
“It was great to finish the weekend with the school record,” Woody said in a release. “That’s one of the top times in the nation in the 1,600-meter relay and that is really exciting to see.”
Bartley and Woodard had additional success during the meet, each running career-best times in the 200 meters with times of 20.81 and 20.89 respectively.
At the Iowa State Invitational in Ames, the distance runners led the Hawkeyes and picked up a number of personal records. Noah Healy ran a personal best 8:15.32 in the 3,000 meters. Ian Eklin (14:24.17), Bailey Hesse-Withbroe (14:43.81), and Daniel Soto (13:59.82) all set personal records in the 5,000 meters as well. Soto’s performance goes down as the third-best time in the 5,000 in school history.
“It was awesome to see some of the great performances at Iowa State from our distance athletes,” Woody said in a release. “Dan Soto continues to build on his fantastic cross country season with another big personal record today.”
The lone win of the weekend for the men’s team was by Chris Thompson in the 600-yard run (1:11.17). Chris Douglas finished second in the 60-meter hurdles and tied his personal best time (7.76) for a fourth time.
“I was happy to see Chris Douglas tie his personal best from last year with a time that should qualify him to the NCAA meet,” Woody said in a release. “It was the best hurdle field in the country, so I was more excited for him to finish second and beat some NCAA-caliber hurdlers.”
On Saturday, Jay Hunt and Reno Tuufuli added top-three finishes for the Hawkeyes. Hunt finished third in the high jump with a mark of 2.01 meters. Tuufuli threw 18.53 in the shot put to finish third in the event.
The final day of competition also saw four other Hawkeyes set personal records. Matt Manternach (1:49.70), Alec Still (1:51.40), and Tyler Olson (1:54.29) all had career-best marks in the 800 meters. Jeff Roberts also ran the best time of his career in the mile (4:11.69).
All in all, Woody liked what he saw from his squad over the weekend.
“Today was another tremendous day for Iowa track and field,” Woody said in a release. “We made some major moves in the Big Ten and NCAA. We had a lot of personal bests which is always encouraging. I thought overall we made some progress over the last couple of days as a team.”
Iowa will be back on the track next weekend at the Alex Wilson Invitational hosted by Notre Dame. It will be the final meet before the Big Ten Indoor Championships.
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