The Hillsdale Invite was this past week­end at the Ken Herrick Track at Hillsdale University, and the Ferris State University Bulldogs were rep­re­sented well at the event as two sep­a­rate Bulldogs cap­tured first place in their respec­tive events.

Sophomore Samantha Johnson earned first-place hon­ors in the 1,500 meter run with a time of (4:36.46), and junior Anna Rudd fin­ished right behind her in sec­ond place by just over a sec­ond. Also accom­plish­ing first place was fresh­man Briana Raasio who won the javelin with a dis­tance of 128–2 feet.

The ladies are con­tin­u­ing to main­tain a high level of per­for­mance and are even look­ing to place in one of the top spots in their con­fer­ence, and it’s a team effort.

Other Lady Bulldogs who impressed were sopho­more Brittany Anderson, who placed third in the 5,000 meter run, and junior Zoey Hohmann, who took runner-up hon­ors in the 400 meter dash.

Afterwards, Anderson said, “I think the event went great, a lot of peo­ple beat their PRs [pre­vi­ous records] and it was a good day overall.”

On the men’s side of things, the Bulldogs did fairly impres­sive as well, as senior Justin Price, sopho­more Andrew Harper and junior Ryan Chulte all came away near the top in their respec­tive competitions.

Price came in sec­ond place in the 400 meter run with a hard earned 48.98 time as well as Harper who also fin­ished up with runner-up hon­ors in the 5,000 meter race. Chute posted a time of 3:56.25 in the 1,500 run, which was good enough to fin­ish in sec­ond place overall.

Another impres­sive feat for FSU was that the Bulldogs took home third, fourth and fifth place fin­ishes in the shot put as ath­letes Sam Goode, Ryan Stankey and Dave Jimpkoski all had impres­sive days at Hillsdale.

After a solid out­ing for FSU, Anderson said, “Next for some of us is Grand Valley State University this week­end for a com­pe­ti­tion and for oth­ers it’s back to Hillsdale for a team relay race, which is where a bunch of teams across the coun­try all com­pete in a relay race type of event.”

The track teams are hit­ting their strides as the sea­son hits the mid­way point, and the goals for the teams are get­ting higher and higher with each impres­sive out­ing as Anderson stated, “The goals for our team for the rest of the sea­son is to fin­ish sec­ond in the con­fer­ence again [behind GVSU] and to see a lot of dif­fer­ent run­ners beat their pre­vi­ous records and improve over­all as a squad”.

April 19 — 21 is the next sched­uled event for the Bulldogs as some will travel to California for the Mt. Sac Relays and oth­ers will go to arch rivals Grand Valley State University’s cam­pus for another
competition.