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By Steve Carpenter
HCC Sports Information Director
Friday, January 16, 2009
While the Hutchinson
Community College men’s track and field team doesn’t have a multi-national
champion sprinter to score a bunch of points this season, don’t feel too
badly for the 2009 Blue Dragon men.
With a nucleus of five
returning national qualifiers, including three All-Americans, veteran Blue
Dragon coach Pat Becher expects big things from his team this season,
especially in the field events and middle distance races.
“Where the men will be the
strongest will be in the middle distances, all of our relays and our field
events will be very solid,” said Becher, whose Blue Dragons open the 2009
season on Saturday at the Highland Invitational.
“We have a lot of good
sophomores who didn’t qualify last year, but are back and are going to do a
good job this year. We also have some very talented freshmen.”
Of the returning national
qualifiers, three were national indoor qualifiers who all scored for the
Blue Dragons’ in their 13th-place national finish. The Blue Dragons finished
sixth in the Region VI Indoor championships last season.
Sophomore Taz Hawthorne
(Winter Haven, Fla), an outdoor All-American in the shot put, just missed
indoor All-America honors with a seventh-place national finish after
throwing 46 feet, 10 inches.
Other returning national
qualifiers are:
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Eron Phillips (Richardson, Texas) was an outdoor All-American to finish
sixth in the nation.
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Ben Kruse (Ellsworth, Kan.) was an outdoor All-American in the pole vault
and the Region VI decathlon runner-up.
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Christopher Copeland (Ardmore, Okla.) was a two-time indoor national
qualifier in the 400 meters and the 4x800 relay.
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Wade Adams (Beloit, Kan.) qualified in both the indoor 4x800 relay and the
distance medley relay.
“The big question for us
will be in the sprints,” Becher said. “We are still waiting on a couple of
guys and we have some young sprinters, but I just don’t know. A guy like
Teddy Poole doesn’t come a long every day, but we might have some good kids
there.”
Copeland leads a group of
middle distance runners that are expected to score a lot of points on the
track. Last season, Copeland ran a time of 52.03 seconds in the indoor 400
national semifinals.
Solomon Jackson (Hays, Kan.)
and Robert Foster (Moore, Okla.) as well as Derrick Krautlarger (Moore,
Okla.) are expected to be major contributors this season. Krautlarger will
also run the hurdles this season.
“He ran as fast of times in
the intermediates as (former HCC All-American) Kyle Roberts did,” Becher
said of Krautlarger. “He’s also a very good 400 runner.”
In the throws, Hawthorne
leads a strong group of Blue Dragons. Becher said he is also counting on
John Benning (Atwood, Kan.), Joel Krause (Haysville, Kan.) and Sam Nelson
(Buhler, Kan.) to help make the Dragons very formidable in the shot put and
weight throw.
In the jumps, Phillips
leaped 24 feet, 6.25 inches at the outdoor national championships to finish
as an All-American. He will be flanked by a pair of high school state
champions in Chance Chelemedos (Scott City, Kan.) and Michael Bethea (Chase,
Kan.).
One change in the men’s
indoor season will be the change for the men from the pentathlon (5 events)
to the heptathlon (7 events), adding the 60-meter sprint and pole vault.
Becher will have Kruse and freshman Jered Nesmith (Mulvane, Kan.) competing
in the multi-event competition this season. Kruse was the Region VI
decathlon runner-up last season, but chose to compete in just the pole vault
at the outdoor national championships only. |
