Defiance Men Finish Seventh at HCAC Championships

TERRE HAUTE, IND. -- The Defiance College men's track and field team wrapped up the regular season at the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship meet on Saturday.

Defiance placed in the seventh position as a team with 38 points, ahead of Franklin, Mount St. Joseph, and Transylvania. Rose-Hulman won their 11th straight HCAC Outdoor Championship with 269.5 points, ahead of Anderson and Hanover.

The Yellow Jackets were led on day two by a trio of hammer throwers scoring points, as senior Joshua Petro (Ocala, Fla./The Villages) placed in the third spot with a toss of 54.19 meters (177 feet, 9 inches), a personal best toss that improves his mark that is the third best in school history. Junior Javier Castillo (Nogales, Ariz.) slotted in right behind Petro in the fourth spot with a career-best 49.39 meter toss (162 feet), moving him into fifth in school history. Junior Andrew Fahler was right behind Castillo, finishing in the fifth position with a personal-best 47.91 meter throw (157 feet, 2 inches). Fahler now sits in the seventh spot on the all-time list.

Switching to the jumps, freshman Vince Jackson (Mason) placed in the third spot with a best jump of 1.88 meters (6 feet, 2 inches) to garner six more points to add to the Yellow Jacket point total.

On the track, freshman Gabriel Caris (Lambertville, Mich./Bedford) followed up his personal-best performance in the prelims on Friday with a fourth place finish in the finals on Saturday, with his tim e of 51.23 seconds.

The 4x100 meter relay team also added points with their best time of the season, 45.36 seconds, as the group of freshman Cody Drumm-Turner (Homer, Mich.), Caris, freshman Jordan Latham (Bethel/Milford), and Jackson finished fifth in the conference.

The 4x400 meter relay team of junior Brandon Zartman (Paulding/Wayne Trace), Caris, Drumm-Turner, and junior Daren Gies (Plymouth) also placed eighth with a time of 3:37.87.

The Yellow Jackets will begin a run of last chance meets for a few remaining athletes on Thursday, May 3 and Friday, May 4 at the University of Toledo Rocket Invitational.