Sophomore Ben Bly and junior Nathan Bates have been named North Coast Athletic Conference Runners of the Week after leading the Wabash indoor track and field team to a seventh place finish at the Titan Invitational, held Saturday afternoon at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Bly (left) was named the men's distance/middle distance runner of the week for his victory in the 5,000 meters. He won the event with a career-best time of 15:45.59. Bly also cut 12 seconds off his season-best time in the mile run, finishing the event with a time of 4:48.28. His teammate, senior Ethan Paul, took fourth place in the 5,000, crossing the finish line in 15:57.24.
Bates (right) earned the sprinter/hurdler of the week award for the second consecutive time. He was selected this week after finishing third out of 39 runners in the 400-meter dash, finishing with a time of 50.76. He was also a part of the fourth-place 4 X 400-meter relay team. Bates joined Bart Banach, Mike Russell, and Geoff Lambert to finish with a time of 3:25.87.
Freshman Wade Heiny was fifth in the 55-meter hurdles. He ran an 8.24 in the preliminaries before turning the fastest freshman time in Wabash history in the finals (8.18). Russell added a fourth place finish in the long jump (20-11.75), in addition to a ninth in the 200-meter dash (23.23). Ben Tritle took fourth place in the shot put with a throw of 44-01.50, just inches short of his best toss of the season.
Wabash scored 34.20 points in meet to take seventh out of 14 teams. The Little Giants return to the track Saturday at the Tiger Invitational at DePauw University.