The Washington and Lee men’s track team dominated at the Blue & Silver Challenge hosted by Christopher Newport in Newport News, Va., on March 31.

The team had two first-place finishes, five second-place finishes, three third-place finishes and recorded nine personal bests.

Among the big winners at the meet was Drew Pranka, ’19. He took first in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 55.56 seconds and third in the 110 meter hurdles with a time of 15.43 seconds.

Shep Sims, ’20, cleared 4.46 meters in the pole vault to snag first place.

Sims said he has been happy with the team’s accomplishments thus far and is looking forward to the rest of the season.

“I feel pretty good about the season so far, consistency has been way better than in the past and I feel like it can only go up from here,” Sims said. ‘The team is focusing on really just keeping focus on every day, it’s easy to get sidetracked and have poor time management at this point in the semester, so I think we’re all just trying to keep moving in the right direction.”

Another important victory for the Generals came in the 4×100 relay. Alex Cantrell, ’19, Donovan Fiore, ’20, Carter Huffman, ’19, and Micah Wilson, ’21, finished in 43.40 seconds to take second place.

Fiore also completed a personal best in the 400-meter race, finishing in just 49.29 seconds to take second place. Dash Dericks, ‘18, finished second in the javelin throw, tossing 51.43 meters.

Hank Patrick, ‘19, claimed second place in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a career-best time of 10:05.53. Ellis Robinson, ‘21, also claimed second place in the high jump with a personal best leap of 1.82 meters.

The 4×400 relay took third place overall. Alexander Caines, ‘21,  Fiore, Huffman, and Wilson finished the race in 3:27.64.

Two Generals completed career-bests in the hammer throw as well. Andrew Creel, ’20, tossed 41.89 meters and Jay Roberts, ’20, threw 31.88 meters.

Going into the CNU meet, Sims focused on a few things in order to perform his best on Saturday. These included “just getting enough sleep, tuning in my form and getting work done for school so that I can just focus on track.”

The Generals will return to action on Saturday, April 14 to compete in the Elon Invitational in Elon, N.C. It will be the team’s final competition before the ODAC championship.