The women’s track and field team kept setting records over the weekend in South Bend, Ind.
Minnesota set 19 season-best and 11 career-best marks in the two-day meet and won two event titles on the first day.
The titles came from redshirt senior Liz Berkholtz and junior Titania Markland, who won the 5,000-meter run and 600-meter run, respectively.
Berkholtz ran her race in 16:37.77, while Markland set a career record in her event by finishing in 1:28.51.
The team set even more records on the second day, including the two fastest mile times of the season. Redshirt sophomore Madeline Strandemo broke her personal best in the event with a time of 4:45.37.
Strandemo said she credited her improvement to her workouts.
“We’ve been doing speed workouts,” Strandemo said. “Got out of the bulk of our training, so everybody feels a bit relieved.”
Sophomore Emerald Egwin also set a personal record in the 400-meter dash by running a time of 54.93 seconds. She placed 10th out of 67 runners.
Tharaldsen wins shot put
Minnesota won the only event it competed in this weekend at Bethel University’s Gene Glader Classic on Saturday.
Freshman Jonathan Tharaldsen won the shot put with a personal-record throw of 17.03 meters on his last throw of the day.
“We have high hopes for him moving forward,” head coach Steve Plasencia said.
The throw was good enough to qualify Tharaldsen, who was last year’s Gatorade North Dakota Boys Track and Field Athlete of the Year, for the USA Track and Field Junior Championship.
Tharaldsen said qualifying for the event was one of his goals this season, and he said coming close in a previous meet encouraged him.
“First meet, I was a centimeter away,” Tharaldsen said. “I knew I could get it and had a good couple weeks of training.”
For Tharaldsen, this season is his first competing in rotational shot put.
“It was foreign to me,” Tharaldsen said. “First couple of months were difficult with the new movement. I picked it up slowly and started [concentrating].”
The Gophers also had the runner-up in the event, with redshirt sophomore Bryan Bjerk placing second with a distance of 15.87 meters.
