DAY 2 RESULTS
POCATELLO, Idaho (February 28, 2020) – Highlighted by a new men's Distance Medley Relay championship record, the Northern Arizona track & field teams combined for a total of five gold medals on Friday at the Big Sky Indoor Track & Field Championships inside Holt Arena. In the process, both the men's and women's teams put themselves in position to raise the trophy heading into the final day of championship competition.
At the end of the first full day of the championships, the NAU men lead the pack through six scored events with 53 points. Eastern Washington is second on the men's leaderboard with 39 points. The NAU women are third with 30 points and trail Idaho State (41 points) and Idaho (31 points) going into Saturday.
Both teams finished the night strong as the Blue & Gold swept the Distance Medley Relays.
First, the NAU women posted their fourth consecutive Big Sky indoor gold medal performance in the DMR with a time of 11:48.97. Junior
Pipi Eitel, the anchor leg, overtook her Sacramento State competitor with 400 meters to go and outdistanced herself from the field to push NAU's relay team, also consisting of freshman
Chloe Barylski, redshirt freshman
Jesselyn Bries and sophomore
Melanie Loff, to the top spot on the podium.
Soon after, the NAU men quartet of junior
Luis Grijalva, freshman Tuipala Koa, sophomore
Theo Quax and senior
Tyler Day obliterated the men's Big Sky Indoor Championship record set 40 years ago in the second-ever conference meet. The 'Jacks posted a time of 9:42.57, breaking the previous meet record by more than 11 seconds.
With an altitude conversion to 9:34.86, the NAU men's DMR slides into 12th nationally and currently hold the last qualifying time for the NCAA Indoor Championships with the top 12 times moving onto the national meet in two weeks.
The Lumberjacks began and ended Friday with a bang as they bookended the day with first-place finishes. The Lumberjack men opened the afternoon with sophomore
William Beaudry and senior
Kevin Cooney sweeping the top two spots in the weight throw, the meet's first individual event.
Beaudry earned up his first career Big Sky gold with a personal-best throw of 20.42m, moving him into the top 40 nationally. Cooney, last season's champion was second with a mark of 19.49m. The Lumberjacks wound up scoring 24 points as junior
Jacob Kaufman placed fifth with a throw of 18.23m and redshirt sophomore
John Murphy setting a new personal-best with a mark of 18.04m to register a seventh-place finish.
The 'Jacks also swept the 5000m run with freshman
Abdihamid Nur (14:29.83) and senior
Mikayla Malaspina (17:00.25) winning the men's and women's races respectively.
Nur became the latest Lumberjack male to win the indoor 5000m as he pulled away from Southern Utah's Nate Osterstock to win his first career conference title. Nur is the eighth different Lumberjack to win the 5K as NAU posted its ninth consecutive indoor 5K win overall.
Malaspina also claimed her first Big Sky gold medal with a win of over seven seconds faster than Idaho's Kelsey Swenson. She became the first NAU runner to win the women's indoor 5K since Nell Rojas in 2009.
Also scoring in the 5000m were sophomore
Ryan Raff (14:33.34; third-place) and junior
Blaise Ferro (14:46.55; sixth-place) for the men and junior
Delaney Rasmussen (17:53.27; eighth-place) for the women. For Rasmussen, Friday's 5K was her first 5000m run during the track & field seasons since last year's Big Sky Outdoor Championships.
The Lumberjack women also got scoring finishes from freshman
Alaina Diggs and sophomore
Matilde Roe in the shot put. Diggs, who came in ranked eighth on the performance list, placed fifth with a personal-best toss of 14.36m. Roe was one spot behind in sixth with a mark of 14.33m.
In Friday's running prelims, a number of 'Jacks on both teams advanced to Saturday's finals. Starting with the 60m dash, junior
Jada Jackson (7.58) and freshman
Kenya Coburn (7.65) qualified for the finals for the women, while freshman
Joseph Hylton turned in a time of 6.90 to move on to the finals on the men's side.
The NAU women qualified three sprinters in the 200m dash led by junior
Miracle Onyemaobi, who also qualified for the 400m finals with a time of 56.53. Onyemaobi recorded a time of 24.57 on Friday, while Jackson also clocked her second qualifying time of 24.68.
Junior
Carter Bracken was the lone Lumberjack hurdler to qualify for the finals, posting a 60m hurdles prelims time of 8.05.
Finally, NAU will enter Saturday's 800m finals with the top times in both races as senior
Geordie Beamish (1:52.84) and Loff (2:12.49) crossed first in the men's and women's prelims respectively. Redshirt freshman
Bryn Morley (2:14.26) snagged the eighth and final qualifying spot in the women's race and will join Loff in the 800m finals.
Fans can catch Saturday's last day of competition on Pluto TV Channel 531
here and on the Pluto TV mobile app in addition to
watchbigsky.com. Live results can be found at this
link.
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