Ohio started the outdoor season at the Wake Forest Open. The Bobcats had strong performances from the throwing and distance teams, something coach Clay Calkins was expecting. He didn’t get a lot from the sprinters, but some of that is because of injuries.
Ohio track and field coach Clay Calkins said his team’s first meet of the outdoor season went, for the most part, like he anticipated.
He was expecting most of the points to come from distance and throwing, which is exactly what happened.
Freshman Jordan Porter had a great showing claiming the top spot in the shot put.
“It’s great coming in as a freshman and winning events,” Calkins said.
Also in the field events, senior Donyelle Brown threw well in hammer and shot put events. In the hammer she took second place and teammate Janiece Rose placed fourth. In the shot put, behind Porter, Brown placed eighth and Rose placed third.
“We had a great performance from all the throwers,” Calkins said.
Moving forward, Calkins wants to work on getting points in the javelin event. Ashlee Bilhimer placed ninth. For the first meet, ninth isn’t something to fret over too much, but Calkins knows the strength of his throwing team and has expectations for them to really be solid throughout the remainder of the outdoor season.
Another area the Bobcats did well in was distance running.
In the 5000-meter event, the Bobcats had five girls place in the top-15 of 44 runners.
Tessa Weigand was the standout in the distance races with a fifth place finish in the 3000-meter run and fourth in 1500-meter run.
“Our distance kids are on an upward swing right now,” Calkins said. “The women are responding well in the outdoor season here and really stepping up.”
The one area that wasn’t as strong as the other two were the sprints. Calkins credited the lack of scoring from the sprints to the amount of injured sprinters he still has.
He said once he gets them back, it would help with the scoring and balance the scoring across all the events.
This event had teams from all over the country and Calkins said that in a way it helped him. He said that when his team normally travels south, it faces competition similar to competitors in the Mid-American Conference.
This weekend didn’t necessarily set the bar for how the outdoor season is going to go, but rather gave his team a preview of what they are capable of doing when facing competitors from around the country.
Once the team gets healthy and the season progresses, the Bobcats track and field team should mesh better and score higher and equally between the throwers, sprinters and distance runners.
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