Ball State's Charity Griffith (HJ), DeAnna Price (WT) Part Of Impressive Field Events

By David Woods for DyeStat

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Mile races are the annual highlight of Notre Dame’s Meyo Invitational. And ordinarily, winning times of 4:33.77 and 3:56.89 would induce celebration.

But this is 2023, the Year of the Mile. Saturday’s respective winners – Illinois’ Olivia Howell and Michigan’s Nick Foster – are only too aware those times likely won’t make the cut to 16 for next month’s NCAA Division 1 Indoor Championships.

No complaints from them, though.

“It’s awesome to be a part of,” Foster said. “NCAA is getting so much better every year. But, I mean, you’ve got to jump on the train or be left behind.”

Howell was aiming at sub-4:30, which would have put her No. 2 or 3 on the NCAA list behind collegiate record-holder Katelyn Tuohy. But the object is still to finish first, and she did so by holding off hard-charging Olivia Markezich of Notre Dame, second in 4:34.00.

“You know what? I’ll take this,” said Howell, a Big Ten champion twice in the outdoor 1,500 meters and last year in the indoor mile.

Foster came within a second of the Meyo Mile record of 3:55.90, set by his Michigan coach, Kevin Sullivan,  in 1995.

Top six all broke four minutes, all in PBs. Behind Foster’s 3:56.89 were Baldwin Magnusson, Eastern Michigan, 3:57.12; Carter Solomon, Notre Dame, 3:57.13; Arjun Jha, Michigan, 3:58.80; Braidy Ba, Kent State, 3:59.47, and Tyler Wirth, Cincinnati, 3:59.89.

Wirth is the last of 57 sub-4-minute milers in the NCAA this year, according to TFRRS data. Washington alone has five milers faster than Foster, who ranks 13th.

Sullivan said runners have only one or two chances to hit an indoor NCAA cut. The Wolverines will head next weekend to the David Hemery Valentine Invitational at Boston, where Foster must choose between the mile and 3,000 meters.

“Mile is a tough event,” Foster said, “You have to have respect for the distance.”

Middle distances are tough across the board. As with the milers, Michigan’s Aurora Rynda was aiming for faster in the 800 meters. However, her 2:02.99 ranks No. 4 in the NCAA and came within a tenth of her indoor best, set in this meet last year.

“I mean, the bar goes up,” said Rynda, a Canadian who has two Big Ten indoor titles at 600 and one outdoors at 800. “You have to be able to get up to that level and be comfortable with it.

“It’s not like you’re getting slower. It’s just another level of athleticism we have to be prepared for.”

Indiana sophomore Camden Marshall won the men’s 800 in 1:48:83. The surface here doesn’t often yield fast sprints, so the 6.64 by Indiana State’s JaVaughn Moore was notable (.01 out of NCAA top 16).

College teams travel here to race on the Loftus Sports Center’s 320-meter oval, so it was paradoxical that most of the top marks came in the field. Among them was a high jump of 6-2/1.88m during Friday’s pentathlon by Ball State’s Charity Griffith. She ranks No. 2 this year in both NCAA and USA.

DeAnna Price, the 2019 world hammer champion, won the women’s weight throw at 80-3/24.46m. That was less than foot off her PB and tied for third in the world. She said she plans to throw the weight in indoor USAs in two weeks at Albuquerque, N.M.

She became a volunteer assistant at Illinois after her husband, J.C. Lambert, took a job as throws coach on the staff of new Illini coach Petros Kyprianou.

“We’re absolutely loving it,” Price said. “It’s been a blast. Training is going very well. We’re just excited to get back to big throwing things again.”

After the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she had ankle reconstruction and hip labrum surgeries. Nine months later, she was fourth at USAs and was qualified for World Championships as defending gold medalist. However, she missed Oregon22 after coming down with COVID.

Now, she said, “I’m feeling a lot like myself.”

Elsewhere in the throws, Illinois’ Tyler Sudduth won the men’s weight with a distance of 74-4.50/22.69m, worth third in the NCAA. Notre Dame’s Michael Shoaf beat Sudduth by a centimeter in Friday’s shot, 63-4.25/19.31 to 63-4/19.30m.

In the pentathlon, Notre Dame’s Jadin O’Brien (4,283) and Griffith (4,179) finished 1-2 and are Nos. 2 and 5 in the NCAA, respectively.

Contact David Woods at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007