Track and Field Opens Indoor Season with Crowell Open

Saturday, December 2

Army West Point

Crowell Open

Track and Field Opens Indoor Season with Crowell Open

December 03, 2023 | Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field

WEST POINT, N.Y. – The Army West Point track and field team hosted the Crowell Open on Saturday to open the indoor season.

Canyon Hall dominated the men's pentathlon winning all but one event to finish with a total of 3300 points. Ronald White placed second with 2724 points.

Harrison Lavery won the men's mile with a time of 4:25.66. Nathaniel Nelson and Shawn Carter placed first and second in the men's 400m. Army also placed first and second in the women's 400m with Lara Westwood-Marsh and Cherokee Chambers claiming the top two slots.

The men's 500m went to Army's Kasen Jeitz with a time of 1:04.56. Tyler Jamison won the men's 60m hurdles.

The women's 800m crown went to Shayla Bonzelet with a time of 2:20.99. The 1000m went to Quinn Collins on the women's side and Harrison Lavery won on the men's side.

Army won the men's 4x400 with Shawn Carter, Kasen Jeitz, Elijah Bellamy, and Nathaniel Nelson running a time of 3:22.50. The women's 4x400 team of Lara Westwood-Marsh, Shayla Bonzelet, Cherokee Chambers, and Quinn Collins placed second with a time of 4:04.11.

In field events, Ethan Hesson won the men's pole vault, Isabel Crandall took home the crown on the women's side. Kayley Ragazzini won the women's shot put and weight throw. Joshua Gilliard won the men's high jump.

The Black Knights are now off for a month and will be back in action in the West Point Open on Jan. 6.

COACHES CORNER

Head coach Mike Smith on the men:

I don't have a whole lot of expectation for performance at the Crowell meet. We generally are still in a loading period in our training and for the most part none of our people are very sharp going into the meet. Having said that, we had some really strong performances today from some of our guys that are indications of the good things that I have seen happening on a regular basis in practice. Josh Gilliard '24 is one of the best high jumpers we have ever had here at the Academy and his opener today (2.11 meters, 6' 11") in the high jump, was a new meet record and is reflective of his potential going forward this year. He gets better when the level of competition forces him to jump at high bars and we saw that today when he was challenged. He will be a regular atop the leader board in the conference this year. We were pretty good on the track today as well. Josh Duncan '27 competed well in the 60m preliminary and then again in the final. He will be very competitive this winter. It is usually difficult to adapt to the training loads and life at the Academy, and he is showing us now how well he is adapting. I expect that he will continue to develop and move himself onto our top 10 list very soon. Kasen Jeitz '26 has had a great fall and will continue to run well this winter. His meet record in the 500 was not a surprise given how he has tested and what I have seen in training. He will just keep getting better and better. There were other breakthroughs and strong marks in the throws. The weight throw mark from Jonathan Segujia '24 was nice to see and was a significant improvement from what he had thrown before. He is in his firstie year for us but is a young thrower still mastering the technique of the event. What I was most pleased with today, was the depth of our performances. We have a lot of quality guys in all of the events in the field and on the track. Very encouraging day for us.

On the women:

We had some really strong performances today from some of our women that are indications of the good things that I have seen happening on a regular basis in practice. Saydee Aganus '24 has been one of our stars for years and she opened up yesterday with the best December hurdle race of her career. She is the best hurdler to ever compete for the Army team so we expect her to perform at a high level but it is nice to see her start the year off at such a high level. Kayley Ragazzini '24 did what she always does….she won. She has high expectations for her last year and today was a good start in both the weight and the shot. She is the leader of our women's team and set the tone today for everyone else. We had a lot of other nice performances that I thought were outstanding early season performances. We are in a good spot as we get ready for the winter break and the start of the championship season in February.