Three School Records Set on Opening Weekend for Men's Track and Field

(PITTSBURGH, Pa.) - The Carnegie Mellon University men's track and field team set three school records and had five other top five school performances in its opening weekend of action at three different events hosted by Youngstown State University, Case Western Reserve University and Edinboro University.

Setting school records for the Tartans was graduate student Bram Miller (Colgate, Wis. / Kettle Moraine Lutheran) in the shot put, senior Justin Kiefel (Downingtown, Pa. / Downingtown STEM Academy) in the triple jump and freshman Cody Breidenbach (Nazareth, Pa. / Nazareth Area) in the weight throw.

Miller's toss of 17.00m in the shot put surpasses James Hulley's mark of 16.47m set in 2009. The school record for Miller is currently first in the nation by 1.42m and placed him second at Youngstown State. Kiefel topped his own school record (14.37m) previously set in 2019 with a leap of 14.45m to place first at Case Western Reserve. Kiefel's mark is second in the nation. Breidenbach won both the shot put and weight throw at Case Western Reserve with a school-record throw of 17.52m in the weight throw. The distance overtakes Zachary Erra-Hernendez's record of 17.18m set in 2014 and is currently third in the nation.

Kiefel also had a career-best result in the long jump when he placed third with a mark of 7.15m which is second all-time for the Tartans.

On the track, sophomore Brian Hu (Vienna, Va. / Thomas Jefferson) placed ninth in the 60-meter dash in 7.16 seconds at YSU on Friday night to achieve the fourth-best time in school history before sophomore David Shao (San Jose, Calif. / Valley Christian) topped that with a time of 7.13 seconds at Case Western Reserve on Saturday. Sophomore Pranav Rajbhandari (Marietta, Ga. / Walton) placed sixth in the 400-meter dash at YSU in 49.91 seconds which puts him fourth all-time.

Lastly, in the top five all-time performances was the 4x400-meter relay team of senior Michael Cai (Dumont, N.J. / Bergen County Academies), junior Leland Davies (East Brunswick, N.J. / East Brunswick High School), graduate student Grant Johnson (Wilmette, Ill. / New Trier) and Rajbhandari that finished fourth in 3:21.75 which is fourth all-time for the Tartans.

Sophomore Thomas Rich (Rochester, N.Y. / Brighton) and freshman Casey Potrebic (Calistoga, Calif. / Justin-Siena) competed at the Edinboro University Mike Kowal Multi-Meet on Saturday and Sunday and placed third and fourth, respectively, in the heptathlon with 4,122 and 4,031 points. Potrebic and Rich finished swept the the top two spots in the 1,000-meter run with Potrebic crossing in 2:57.78 and Rich in 2:59.19. Rich won the long jump with a mark of 6.76 meters and took second in the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.87 seconds. Besides his win in the 1,000-meter run, Potrebic took second in the pole vault and shot put. He cleared 3.95 meters in the pole vault and had a distance of 11.79 meters in the shot put.

The Tartans will be idle until January 21 when the compete at the Youngstown State University Collegiate Invitational.

Other top performances for the meets include:

Alexander Palmer (Maple Shade, N.J. / Maple Shade) second in 400-meter dash in 53.15 at CWRU
Jackson Ellinger (Great Falls, Va. / Langley) second in mile in 4:33.55 at CWRU
Seth Williams (Rocky River, Ohio / Rocky River) first in 3,000-meter run in 9:15.43 at CWRU
Micah Nowlin (Huntington Beach, Calif. / Edison) second in 60-meter hurdles in 8.88 at CWRU
Jeffrey Zhang (Flower Mound, Texas / Flower Mound) third in long jump 6.47m, fourth in triple jump 12.53m at CWRU
Aleksei Seletskiy (Palo Alto, Calif. / Palo Alto) fourth in mile run in 4:18.92 at YSU
Jacob Hsu (Arcadia, Calif. / Arcadia) third in 3,000-meter run in 8:52.99 at YSU
Justin Hsu (San Carlos, Calif. / Carlmont High) fourth in 3,000-meter run in 8:53.25 at YSU