Adrianna Rodencal had waited all morning and afternoon for this. Perhaps she had put too much pressure on herself. Rodencal’s time of 8.76 in the prelims of the 60-meter hurdles, while quite good for most, did not meet her high standards. Said Rodencal, “I was shaking. I was a hot mess. I felt like I was a freshman all over again.” But she’s not a freshman – and she won’t let herself succumb to negative self-talk.
It's not the start Rodencal wanted, but every goal she had entering the meet remains out there for the taking. It’s Saturday at the 2025 GPAC Indoor Track & Field Championships in Mitchell, S.D., home to Dakota Wesleyan University. It’s approximately 3:30 p.m. Rodencal doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to accomplish a mission that will yield three GPAC titles (one in a relay) and one conference runner-up placement as the best all-around performance for any women’s athlete present in Mitchell.
As Head Coach Matt Beisel would say afterwards, “I know this was on her mind a lot. This was something Coach (Mark) Samuels and her really wanted to do. I’m really happy for her. It’s a big accomplishment when you think of the level of talent every team in the GPAC has. What she did is historical. I’m very grateful for her.”
Hours earlier, Rodencal does her best to keep her normal meet day routine. On the morning of the GPAC Championships, Rodencal wakes up in her hotel room at 7:45 a.m., giving her plenty of time to prepare herself before departure at 9:45 a.m. Her first race is scheduled for 3:25 p.m., more than seven hours from now as she fires up the waffle machine in the continental breakfast dining room area of the hotel. Says Rodencal, “The waffle machines in hotels are my favorite place to go in the mornings – and I usually get some yogurt.”
Rodencal then escapes to a corner of the room with three specific items: her Bible, her journal and a book on mental training for athletes. On this day, she’s reading first and second Corinthians while Christian music emanates from her headphones. She continues by writing in her journal. Then she reads from “The Champion’s Mind” and she prays. As she reads, she marks up the book with red ink and highlights words and sentences that speak to her profoundly.
One concept that sticks in Rodencal’s mind is the idea of ‘sports-based amnesia.’ In other words, forget what happened in the past, good or bad. She can only control her actions right now, right this moment. Let’s file that one away for later in the day. As departure time approaches, Rodencal focuses her mind on letting the “Lord’s light shine through what I’m doing.”
The Meet
Rodencal arrived along with many of her teammates at the DWU/Avera Sports and Wellness Complex in Mitchell at about 10 a.m. The wait would continue for another several hours. The men’s high jump was just beginning while the men’s heptathlon carried on with hurdles and pole vault unfolding. The setting was a fieldhouse lined with concrete walls and a low ceiling that made the sound of the starter gun reverberate in ear-piercing fashion. Rodencal had never competed here before.
At a typical regular season meet, Rodencal has much less time to kill before beginning warmups. As Rodencal explains, “It’s not like that normally. It was a very interesting headspace to be in. I was able to go watch women’s long jump, watch pole vault, high jump and multi-events that were still happening – and cheer people on. As we got closer to 3:25, I read more of my book, ate lunch and recentered myself. With hurdles, we warm up about an hour before we start. I was able to warm up with Izzy (Isabelle Salters) and Josey Welch. We were laughing and talking together. That kind of gets the nerves out a little bit. With a new facility, I’m always worried about where to warm up and making sure I’m not in other people's way.”
Rodencal has learned a lot from her adolescent days about how to properly fuel her body with food and drink on meet days. Whatever she did as a prep at Lincoln Lutheran High School worked like a charm. She won five state gold medals as both a junior and senior while taking on as many events as she could handle. Part of the key to success is eating all three meals throughout the day while consuming carbs and electrolytes.
The selection of vittles on this Saturday included small bites such as deli meet sandwiches, string cheese sticks and pretzels – not everything has to be considered healthy. When she makes it back to camp, Rodencal tears into a pack of Trolli’s, a type of gummy candy laced with sugar. Go ahead and try to stand between track athletes and their sugar fix on meet days.
After the hours go by, it’s finally time for the prelims of the 60 hurdles. Rodencal patiently waits for the third and final heat, which includes Salters and Welch. As she makes her way to the blocks, Rodencal can feel herself pulsating with nervousness as the butterflies weigh down her stomach. With the pop of the gun, Rodencal takes off in a flash, but things quickly go wrong. She clips the first hurdle but manages to recover and then speed across the finish line in 8.76, third best in the prelims.
Amnesia. That’s what it’s going to take today. Thankfully, the 60-meter dash prelims are just minutes away. There won’t be much time to think. Just run. Says Rodencal, “Nerves had definitely gotten to me. I was not calm and composed. I went into the 60 dash prelims with the intention of getting those nerves out. That went really well. I was able to do that and recenter myself.”
Ten minutes after finishing the 60 hurdle prelims, Rodencal clocked a 60-dash preliminary time of 7.76, good for second in the field of 18 athletes. Now qualified for the finals in her first two events, Rodencal has nearly two hours of prep time before the finals. Looking further into the evening, she knows she wants to have something left for the 200 meters at 6:55 p.m. and the 4x400-meter relay at 7:55. At this point, Rodencal can feel herself relax as she enters a “comfortable headspace.”
A few Trolli crawlers will keep the sugar levels high as the 60 hurdle finals approach at 5:55 p.m. Three times this season Rodencal has hit exactly 8.53, a time no other Concordia women’s athlete has ever achieved. But she won’t be truly satisfied until she breaks 8.50. She just can’t clip a hurdle this time and expect to reach that barrier – or win the GPAC title. This event is supposed to be hers, and she wants it.
Said Rodencal, “The big thing Coach Samuels told me was that if we can get you a good start and not hit the hurdles, you’re going to go sub-8.50. I had been reaching for that. Hitting 8.53 three times this year, I knew it was there. All I need to do is get quicker on my start and not hit a hurdle. My big thing going into finals was get to the first hurdle first, get there before any of the other ladies got there. That’s how it went. I exploded out of the blocks. I was just confident in my start. From there it was about having a smooth trail leg and smooth lead leg. It finally clicked.”
Shortly after Rodencal rocked across the finish line, she heard Coach Beisel bark out the time, “Eight-Four-Nine!” It was a blistering performance for Rodencal, who nearly cried with joy. As she says, it was simply God working through her. Chalk up GPAC title No. 1 on the day, but there was little time to celebrate. That’s where her maturity kicked in. The 60 dash finals were 10 minutes away. Amnesia. Recenter.
Rodencal was growing stronger as the day wore on. She cruised to a 60 dash finals time of 7.66, knocking 0.1 seconds off from the prelims. Rodencal placed runner up to a competitor from Doane. Individually, Rodencal had collected 18 team points with the 200 meters and 4x4 yet to go. This was only the second time this indoor season that Rodencal had run the 60 meters. However, she and Coach Samuels knew she was capable of placing near the top of the conference, and the extra points would be a boost to the team and her own chances of earning athlete of the meet honors.
After finishing the 60 dash, Rodencal tells herself, “I need to eat.” It’s nearly 6 o’clock and the 200 meters is roughly an hour from taking place. Rodencal returns to camp and dives into the sandwich she hasn’t yet finished. She’ll need more than just the Trolli crawlers to get her through the remainder of the meet. Says Rodencal, “The big thing was remaining confident and not doubting what I can do. I had done the 200 and 4x4 in the same meet before. It wasn’t that hard. I knew I was going to have to mentally commit. There were good athletes in the 200. I couldn’t just coast to the finish line. A lot of it was making sure I was eating and having fun. If you’re not comfortable and enjoying your time, you’re not going to run as well as you want to.”
At DWU’s indoor facility, 200 meters means one full lap around the track. It takes Rodencal 25.32 seconds to circle her way back to the finish line, .15 seconds faster than the second-place finisher from Mount Marty. Add another gold to the collection for Rodencal, who pushes her point total to 28. She’s now completed her individual events at the GPAC Championships.
An hour will separate the 200 and 4x4 as Rodencal prepares to run the 4x4 relay at a conference meet for the first time. She will get it started as the leadoff leg before the baton gets passed to Trinity Tuls and then to Isabelle Salters and finally to Kayla Kirchner. Each Bulldog has competed in at least one individual event as the meet barrels towards its dramatic conclusion. Admits Rodencal, “I was starting to feel it. My legs were getting tired. At this point, it’s trusting Coach and the workouts he’s put us through. It was also trusting the girls.” For some extra oomph, Rodencal drinks from a decarbonated bottle of Coca Cola, seriously. As she notes, “There’s a lot of sugar in those. That was something new.”
Riding that high, Rodencal carried the baton for 59.36 seconds before handing off to Tuls. A few minutes later, Rodencal and her teammates celebrated a 4x4 GPAC title to cap the meet. Concordia finished in 3:56.66, holding off runner up Dordt, 3:58.26. The previous two years, Rodencal had been a spectator for the 4x4. This time she contributed to another gold medal. Said Rodencal, “To be the one running was a whole different feeling. It was loud. I had ringing in my ears just from our team cheering. It really helped having the entire team support.”
Rodencal earned credit for 2.5 points for her part in the 4x4. That brought her meet total to 30.5 points – all in one day’s work. For the third time in her career, Rodencal had claimed the title of GPAC Outstanding Athlete of the Meet. The closest competitors for the honor this time around were Midland’s Kerrigan Myers (26) and Doane’s Josie Garrett (21) and Danie Parriott (21).
As she talks about the achievement three days later, Rodencal begins to feel the weight of it sinking in. After missing out on Athlete of the Meet status as a sophomore in 2024, Rodencal hit on a goal she had for herself in 2025. Of course, there’s more to come, but her Saturday at the 2025 GPAC Indoor Championships was one worth celebrating.
“It’s an amazing feat to be able to go and do that,” Rodencal said. “I definitely sat down in the summer and during preseason meetings with Coach Samuels knowing I wanted that again. ‘I am going to fight for that. I will be on whatever I need to be to get those points.’ I was super excited. Kerrigan Myers from Midland is an amazing girl, super sweet. We talked quite a bit. She had an outstanding meet. At the end of the day, it’s super fun to be the one named the athlete of the meet.”
In the aftermath, Rodencal credits coaches, teammates, supporters and her faith. With a week off following the conference meet, Adrianna can set amnesia aside for just a bit. When the next meet day arrives in Gainesville, Florida, she’ll repeat the routine all over again – Bible study, prayer, journaling and leaping hurdles. Don’t forget the Trolli crawlers or the decarbonated Coke.