Coming off a very solid fifth-place finish at the huge Cal-Nevada Championships, the Aggies headed across the Causeway for the much smaller Mondo Invite, where they competed against California, North Dakota State and Sacramento State.
While they didn’t fall apart, UC Davis wasn’t able to bring its “A” game two weeks in a row.
“It was okay,” said coach Jon Vochatzer. “A couple good things, a couple okay things but nothing super. It was just okay. If you look at all the results, nothing really jumps out at you and made you say, ‘Wow.‘ Not one of those meets – not really a barnburner – but a good meet for everyone.“
The highlight of the day was the 400m, where sophomore Thomas Phillips and junior Alex Wilright took first and second, respectively.
Phillips‘ career-best time of 47.77 strengthened his hold on the No. 3 slot on UC Davis‘ all-time list. Wilright was right behind, finishing in 47.89. This comes a week after the duo made their way onto the national top-10 list in the 400m hurdles at UCLA.
“Last weekend was tough,” Phillips said. “We worked hard all this week, so it was kind of a run-and-see-where-we’re-at sort of thing. I’m happy I was able to run that time considering the amount of training we did last week.“
Though Phillips and Wilright are obviously quite impressive in the open 400m, expect them to continue to focus on the hurdles.
“The 400m hurdles is definitely my favorite event,” Phillips said. “It’s such a technical race and requires a lot of focus. It’s an interesting race to run.“
While Phillips‘ win was the only individual top performance, the 4x100m relay team was also quite impressive, running the second-fastest time in school history.
“The 4x100m finally had a good run, going 41.25,” Vochatzer said. “We won that. Besides that nothing really jumps out.“
Additionally, some multi-eventers competed in some individual events, setting the stage for some solid marks at the Azusa Pacific Multis in two weeks.
“One of our decathletes, Will Guthrie, has been tearing it up in the javelin,” Phillips said. “He’s throwing farther than all the guys who throw it for an event.“
In addition to his 51.72m throw for third, Guthrie cleared 1.75m in the high jump and clocked 16.80 in the 110m hurdles.
“We were working through it and coming back from Cal-Nevada where we had a great meet,” Vochatzer said. “Sometimes it’s hard to bounce from a great meet to another great meet.“
ALEX WOLF-ROOT can be reached at sports@theaggie.org.
