Kittle Earns Three All-America Awards; Tigers Finish 23rd as a Team
LA Crosse, WI - An outstanding 2025-26 Wittenberg Track & Field season was capped by a tremendous final day for sophomore Jack Kittle (Chagrin Falls, OH / Chagrin Falls), who earned three All-America awards on Day 3 of the 2026 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Kittle's tremendous performance - he ran three races in less than three hours on Saturday - powered Wittenberg to 23rd place as a team with nine total points. The host team, Wisconsin-La Crosse, won the team title with 106 points.
Kittle started his day with his best finish. After turning in the second-fastest time in the 400-meter prelims on Friday - 46.75 seconds to win the third and final heat - Kittle was involved in a photo finish for second place in the finals. The fifth-place finisher in the 400-meter dash at the 2025 NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships, Kittle posted a school record time of 46.15 in the 2026 finals race. Grant Nelson of Bethel won the race with a time of 45.76, followed by Kittle and Colin Conzemius of Wisconsin-La Crosse with matching times of 46.15 - Conzemius got second place by a mere four one-hundreds of a second ahead of Kittle.
After placing third in the 400-meter dash, Kittle came back to run the 200-meter dash finals. He posted a time of 21.36 in the prelims on Thursday to qualify with the ninth-best time. He moved up two spots in the finals with a time of 21.26 to finish in seventh place. Kai Smith of Salisbury won the event in a time of 20.42.
Kittle put the finishing touches on his amazing weekend by anchoring Wittenberg's 4x400-meter relay. After posting the fifth-fastest time in the prelims on Thursday, the quartet of graduate student Cameron Elliott (Springfield, OH / Springfield), junior Owen Bier (Elyria, OH / Midview), and sophomore Kory Davis (Brookville, OH / Brookville) placed eighth with a time of 3:11.34.
To total things up on the weekend, Kittle earned three first-team All-America awards, while his relay teammates Elliott, Bier, and Davis all earned All-America honors as well. This is the first All-America finish for a relay in Wittenberg Track & Field program history.
"This was a great weekend for our program," said Wittenberg Track and Field Program Director Paris Hilliard. "This put an exclamation point on our great season this year. I am very encouraged that this weekend can catapult our team into being a top-10 team next year."
Written By: Ryan Maurer