While many students took the time to relax over break, many of the Illinois winter athletes took to the court, field or mat to compete. Winter sports continued their seasons, while spring sports began over break.

Wrestling

Emery Parker rapidly advanced through the 55th annual Ken Kraft Midland Invitational until he made it to the finals.

In an 8-2 victory against top-seeded Nate Jackson of Princeton, Parker gained the 13th championship title in Illinois history.

Illinois moved on to host Nebraska the following week in the 10th annual Great Escape match. Barely gaining the win with help of Parker and freshman Mike Carr and upsetting two top ten Huskers, the Illini won 18-17 on criteria.

Illinois managed another narrow win the following day against Northwestern. Heavyweight wrestler Deuce Rachal’s defeat of No. 19 Conan Jennings with only 37 seconds left in the third period gave the Illini the 3-2 victory and pushed the final score to 18-17.

To wrap up Illinois’ break campaign, the team fell to No. 14 Minnesota.

The Illini are now 3-3 overall and 2-2 in the Big Ten.

Men’s and women’s gymnastics

Opening its season with first-year coach Nadalie Walsh, the women’s gymnastics team won its season opening quad meet.

Two Illini earned event titles. Sophomore Karen Howell won event titles on floor with a 9.800 and bars scoring a 9.875, the second and third of Howell’s career. Freshman Kasey Meeks captured the vault title with a 9.825.

Defeating No. 4 Minnesota, No. 8 Iowa and No. 17 UIC, the men’s gymnastics team pulled away with its fourth-straight Windy City Invitational.

Starting the night on the pommel horse, Brandon Ngai captured the first of the three event titles that the Illini received in the competition. The senior finished with a score of 15.250.

In the next rotation, Alex Diab captured the still rings title with a 14.450, followed closely by teammate Dennis Minton with a score of 14.000.

Two rotations later, Bobby Baker grabbed the final event title for the Illini on the horizontal bar with a 13.600.

The team finished with an overall 404.300 to come away with its fourth straight Windy City Invite title.

Men’s and women’s track and field

The Illinois track and field team opened up its season on Saturday with the annual Illinois Open. The men won nine individual titles, while the women won five.

On the track, David Kendziera pulled away with an easy win, earning the 60-meter hurdle title with at time of 7.80, nearly half  a second ahead of the second-place finisher.

Jayla Stewart also won the hurdles for the women’s team, running a 8.53 in qualifiers and dropping .07 seconds to claim the title in the final.

After timing a 6.81 in preliminaries, Devin Quinn came back even faster for a 6.75 win.

Joe Haight and Aaron Harris won titles in the 200-meter and the 400-meter, respectively.

The team of Josh Eiker, Konrad Eiring, Quinn and Haight also won the 4×400 meter relay.

Nicole Choquette picked up the win in the 600-meter with a time of 1 minute, 33.47 seconds and Rebecca Craddock ran a personal best of 2 minutes, 14.46 seconds for the 800-meter title.

Denis O’Callaghan won the 800-meter and Garrett Lee won the 3,000-meter.

In the field, pole vaulters Cooper Jazo and Sara McKeeman and high jumper Parker Deloye claimed titles in their respective events.

Briana Driver won the long jump with a 5.80-meter jump.

The men’s team won the meet with 207 points and the women finished in second with a score of 136.5 behind Southern Illinois.

Hockey

The Illini hockey team returned to the ice after a winter break of its own during the first week of January.

After dropping its first game back against Robert Morris, Illinois found its stride, winning its next three games, splitting the series against Robert Morris and completing a weekend sweep against Rochester College.

The Illini finished out last semester ranked No. 9 in the ACHA and have held onto that ranking as of Jan. 10. They currently have a record of 15-6-0-1. Nick Fabbrini’s squad has not enjoyed very much success in the stacked CSCHL conference, where the Illini have a 2-1-4-1 record-good enough to place fourth out of five teams.

The three teams ahead of Illinois — Lindenwood, Robert Morris and Ohio — are all ranked higher in the ACHA rankings.

Illinois does not have a clear-cut leader when it comes to points. Drew Richter, James McGing and Robert Ernsting are all tied with 20 points a piece for the team lead. There are four more Illini who have tallied at least 15 points during the season.

The Illini have five more weekend series — two of which are conference matchups — left on the schedule before the CSCHL tournament in late February.

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