Mering Paces Sagehens at Oxy Distance Carnival

The men’s track and field team performed extremely well at the 2009 Occidental Distance Carnival.  This twilight competition provided all the key elements for a fast night of racing and the Sagehens of Pomona-Pitzer delivered.  The team traveled to the meet with fourteen distance runners and all but one was able to achieve an all-time best performance.

Results
 
Two athletes made their way onto the distinguished Pomona-Pitzer all time top ten performance list. Torrey Olson (10,000m), who was the first conference runner to cross the finish line, now holds the number seven spot after running at a blistering time of 31:27.60. Olson was able to average 5:03/mile for the 25 lap (6.2 mile) race.  His time marked a significant improvement over his 32:25.04 performance in the 10K from just a year ago.  Olson has taken a huge step towards reaching his goal of qualifying for the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. John Mering (1500m) was the highlight performance of the night.  His time of 3:53.24 was good enough to move him to third on the all-time performance list but more importantly, propelled him to number one in the nation. Mering needed to run 3:55 to qualifying for the NCAA Championship and managed to dip well below the standard.  Although it is still early in the outdoor track and field season, Mering is the only runner in the nation (NCAA D-III) to run sub-3:55 in the 1500m.
 
Also running well for the Sagehens were senior Brendon Randall-Myers (15:23.89; 5,000m); freshman Anders Crabo (9:36.63; 3,000m steeplechase) and freshman Colin Flynn (4:04.46; 1500m).