Denison competed at the annual Ron Althoff Invitational hosted by Ohio Wesleyan on Monday at the George Gauthier Track in Delaware, Ohio, which will serve as the site of this year's NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championship.
One of the biggest performances of the day came from sophomore Wallace Branche who moved one step closer to securing his first trip to the national meet. Entering Monday, Branche was three spots below the cut line to make the NCAA Championship meet. Going into Monday's triple jump, the DU coaching staff knew that a mark of 14.50 meters would move him above that line with less than a week before the field was announced.
After fouling on his first attempt, the sophomore successfully posted a mark of 14.04 meters in his second jump. After fouling on his next two jumps, Branche had just two more opportunities to hit that 14.50-meter mark. On his fifth jump, he eclipsed that mark with a leap of 14.57, which tied the ninth-best performance in all of Division III heading into the final week of competition. Branche improved on that personal-best mark with a leap of 14.61 in his final attempt to win the event. With his performance on Monday, he improved his previous PR by 1'0.50" and jumped from 23rd to ninth in the Track & Field Results Reporting System (TFRRS) national rankings.
Sophomore Andrew Groff and senior Stephen Stitcher recorded a pair of top-8 performances in the 5,000-meter run. Groff finished runner up in the event with a personal-best time of 15:54.12, while Stitcher's time of 16:39.53 landed him in eighth place. Sophomores Quenton Richards and Mitch Keller combined for three seventh-place finishes on Monday. After tying his personal record time of 10.77 in the prelims of the 100, Richards took seventh in the finals after crossing the finish line in 11.02. The sophomore sprinter also had a PR time in the 200 dash after clocking in at 22.57. In the 1500, Keller finished the race in 4:24.66.
In his final collegiate meet, senior thrower John Bute had a strong day in Delaware. Bute recorded a personal-best heave of 43'8" en route to a ninth-place finish in the shot put. That mark was a personal record for the senior in the shot put. Bute also took 11th in the discus with a personal-best toss of 123'6". That performance moved him into 10th place on the school's top performers list. In his first event of the day, the senior placed 14th in the hammer with a throw of 107'4".
The 2014 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championship is scheduled to begin on Thursday, May 22 and run through Saturday, May 24 at George Gauthier Track on the campus of Ohio Wesleyan University. Thursday's events are scheduled to begin at 12 p.m.
