With the opportunity to run under the sunny California skies, BYU’s track and field team brought home its fair share of personal bests from the University of Southern California Trojan Invitational over the weekend.
The level of competition combined with the good weather ensured a day full of promising results.
“We had phenomenal weather,” men’s coach Mark Robison said. “It was a beautiful day; it couldn’t have been any better.”
On the track, the sprinters proved their strength with All-Americans Cade Lindahl finishing fourth in the 400 meters and Ryan Waite placing sixth in the 800 meters. Fanfan Charles came across the 100-meter finish line with a career-best time of 10.58 seconds.
This speed transferred over to the distance races. Ryan Soberanis, Jared Rohatinsky, Justin Hedin and Ryan Jones finished in the top ten of the men’s 1500 meter race.
Because of the bad weather last meet and the limited number of athletes traveling, the team did not compete the week before last. The Cougars definitely stepped up their game this week as many performances established new personal marks to improve upon.
The field events also proved to be a valuable strength to the team.
Colby Barber finished second in the shot put at a distance of 16.87 meters. Dakoda John placed third in the high jump, and Seth Weller came in fourth overall in the discus. Kyle Baker and Keith Keller finished fourth and sixth, respectively, in the javelin.
With fewer teams but a higher level of competition, BYU enjoyed the meet at USC.
“There were some very good performances and really, really good competition,” Robison said.
