Saturday Results
Complete Results
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (May 13, 2017) – One team halted an impressive streak, while joining the other in building one of their own. The Sacramento State men and Northern Arizona women were each crowned Big Sky champions on Saturday.
The 2017 Big Sky Outdoor Track & Field Championships, presented by Red Lion Hotels Corporation, saw some intense competition, various stellar individual efforts and a down-to-the-wire team title race. In the end, it was the hometown Hornets grabbing their second title in the past three years and first outright title since winning in 2011, also in Sacramento. The NAU women claimed their third outdoor title in the past four seasons, while making it a cross country, indoor and outdoor track & field sweep.
Presumably pegged as underdogs coming in, Sac State racked up 88.5 points on the final day to claim the title with 131.2 overall. The Hornets scored in 11 events on Saturday, adding two individual titles and eight all-conference performances.
What ended up being the most crucial events for Sac State was the 110-meter hurdles and triple jump. Andre Lindsey headed a 1-2 finish with Aric Walden in the 110 hurdles, clocking a time of 14.05. Then with the team title race heating up, Sac State sealed it with a big 1-3-4 showing in the triple jump. Darius Armstead leaped 51-7 ¼ in the event, while his teammate Jah Strange joined him on the podium in third.
On top of those events, Sac State also got top-three finishes from Michael Turner (third, 200), Steven Pust (2nd, pole vault), Daniel Onuoha (3rd, high jump) and the 4x400 relay (2nd).
In the process, Sac State snapped NAU’s streak of consecutive outdoor titles at five. But any casual track & field fan would know that ending any sort of coveted streak like that requires some help, and the Hornets got that from runners-up in the team standings Southern Utah.
SUU dominated the distance events on the men’s side, with Mike Tate (10,000/5,000) and Kasey Knevelbaard (1,500/800) each pulling off distance doubles in their events. Combined with Weber State’s Luca Sinn’s victory in the steeplechase Friday, NAU was shut out of individual distance titles on the men’s side for the first time since 2003. Tate also stopped NAU’s streak of 5K titles that had gone on from 2007-16.
On the women’s side, NAU entered the day with 23 points, but throttled towards the title with 102 points, four titles and 10 all-conference performances on Saturday.
Jasmine Malone (400, 53.63) and Maggie Carruth (800, 2:07.38) claimed individual titles on the day for the Lumberjacks. In addition to a third-place finish in the 200, Malone added to her outstanding day helping NAU to titles in both relays, running 46.66 in the 4x100 before joining Carruth on a victorious 4x400 that set a championship record of 3:39.52. Carruth added a runner-up performance in the 1,500 as well.
Adding to the all-conference haul for NAU were a handful of silver medals from Shanice McPherson (2nd, 100), Nicole Fotinos (2nd, 400), Ashley Taylor (2nd, 400 hurdles), Julia Viberg (2nd, discus). McPherson and Fotinos joined Malone on the champion 4x100 team, while Fotinos and Taylor were part of the 4x400 relay team as well.
Sac State, NAU and SUU weren’t hogging all the feats at the championships, as there were several other noteworthy performances at the meet.
For the first time in Big Sky history, four athletes shared the Men’s Most Valuable Athlete award, as SUU’s Knevelbaard and Tate, Weber State’s Alex Reece and Sac State’s Turner each amassed 20 points at the meet. Reece pulled off the sprint double, winning the 100 in 10.21 and the 200 in 20.87. Turner used a long jump victory and scored points in the 100 and 200 as well to join the other three athletes.
North Dakota’s Molli Detloff claimed the women’s nod for Most Valuable Athlete. Detloff picked up 18 points on Saturday, winning the discus (168-9) and taking second in the hammer throw. She had earned four points on Friday in the shot put, bringing her total to 22.
The meets’ Outstanding Performer awards both came from the hammer throw. NAU’s Adam Keenan took the men’s honors for the second straight meet as he broke his own championship and all-time record with a toss of 230-3. Montana’s Hana Feilzer claimed the women’s nod after a winning toss of 206-3.
The meet as a whole saw five athletes become double individual champions, as Portland State’s Genna Settle won both the 100 (11.48) and 200 (23.72) titles, marking her second sprint double of the year as she had also won the 60-meter dash and 200 indoors. Montana State’s Alyssa Snyder also pulled off a double, adding a 5K victory to her 10K one from the previous night and setting a meet record in 16:32.56.
On top of Reece’s pair of wins, WSU had three more titles on Saturday. Jamie Stokes set a championship record in a winning effort of the 1,500, running 4:19.51. Tawnie Moore ran the fourth-best time in Big Sky history, earning a title in the 100 hurdles. Anthony Gregory won the high jump, clearing 6-11.
The Montana schools each earned three event victories on the final day. Adding to Feilzer’s victory, Montana’s Sammy Evans (triple jump, 42-1 ¼) and Daniel Jones (javelin, 215-8) also grabbed gold medals Saturday. Along with Snyder, MSU’s Amanda Jaynes (400H, 58.16) and Kyle Douglass (shot put, 58-8 ¾) added first-place finishes.
Idaho earned two victories in the 400-meter discipline, with Kaizer Gillispie wining the open event (46.52) and Mack Baxter in the hurdles (52.64). Other Big Sky champions crowned on the day included the NAU men’s 4x100 (40.49), SUU men’s 4x400 (3:12.44) and ISU’s Steven Wacker (pole vault, 15-10).
In the team standings, Montana was the runner-up on the women’s side with 116 points. Sac State followed with 107 points, and Weber State (99) and Montana State (93) rounded the top five. On the men’s side, SUU had 119 points, WSU had 115 and NAU had 97.6.