Although the Blugold’s distance medley relay took fourth, they still met the NCAA provisional qualifying time at the WIAC Indoor Track Championship, which was held at UW-Stevens Point this weekend. The relay finished with a time of 10 minutes, 13.09 seconds.

The distance medley relay team of senior Mike Mascitti and sophomores James Larson, Rick Maleniak and Sean Gavigan qualified to race at nationals Friday in Oshkosh. Their time of 10:13.09 was enough to take fourth place in the meet.

UW-Oshkosh won the championship, earning 184 points. UW-La Crosse came in second with 170.5 points while UW-Stevens Point and Eau Claire came in third and fourth with scores of 130 and 57 respectively.

Freshman Chad Crutchley and junior Jeff Bergstrom took the highest places for the Blugolds. Crutchley took second in the 200-meter dash with a time of 22.21 seconds, while Bergstrom earned his second-place finish in the triple jump with a leap of 45 feet, 10.5 inches.

Crutchley also took fourth in the 55-meter dash with a time of 6.56 seconds.

“It was an intense weekend overall,” Crutchley said. “The sprint competition in this conference is really tough. Everybody was on top of their game.”

The ‘Golds 800 relay team was disqualified for an illegal hand-off. The Blugolds lost eight points for the disqualification.

“In spite of losing the points, we were still able to scrape everything together and place fourth as a team,” Steuernagel said. “Our 4 by 400 picked it up to run their best time of the season.”

The 1,600 team finished fourth with a time of 3:23.76, which is three seconds off the NCAA provisional qualifying time.