by Alan Babbitt

Connor Vachon, Nathan Trumble, Eli Meder, and Nick Hoffman delivered a breakthrough performance for the Hope College men's track and field team.

The Flying Dutchmen's distance medley relay earned the team's first NCAA All-America honors at the Division III Indoor Championships with a fourth-place finish on Friday in Winston Salem, N.C.

The relay clocked a school-record time of 9 minutes, 59.08 seconds to rise from their 11th seed heading into the meet.

Photo by Julia Robleski

Assistant coach Mark Norhuis said all four runners executed perfectly on the track.

The distance medley relay covers nearly 2 1/2 miles (4,000 meters) and is made up of a 1,200-meter leg (three laps on a standard 400 meter track), a 400-meter leg (one lap), an 800-meter leg (two laps), and a 1,600-meter leg (four laps) in that order.

"It started with Connor. We didn't want him to go too fast for the first half; we wanted him to build for the second half. He brought us into fifth place," said Northuis, who works with distance runners. "He had a great hand off to Nate. This was Nate's only third time running this relay. It's hard to keep people outside of him, but he did.

"Eli had the fastest time in the 800 of any runner in the race. He moved us up to fourth. Nick was able to bring it home. We ran the ideal race."

Vachon, Trumble, Meder and Hoffman eclipsed their own record time of 10:00.74.

"We were only five seconds off the national record," Northuis said.

Vachon is a freshman from Jenison, Michigan (Jenison HS). 

Trumble is a senior from Granger, Indiana (Trinity School at Greenlawn).

Meder is a junior from Williamston, Michigan (Lansing Catholic).

Hoffman is a senior from Holland, Michigan (Holland).

Hope finished 39th team with five points.