RAPID CITY, S.D. – After a windy day two of Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) Championship action, hosted by South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs track & field program showcased stellar performances to position themselves into striking range for championship Sunday.
The Mountain Lions were able to capture five podium spots and six provisional marks in day two of conference championships. The UCCS men's team currently sits in fifth place with 29 points as Colorado School of Mines leads the pack with 68.5 team points. For the Mountain Lion women, they lead the conference championship with 42 team points with Colorado School of Mines trailing in second at 41 points.
Kaija Crowe and Hannah Ellis earned the first hardware of the day with a first place and second place finish respectively. The women's heptathlon was brought to an end on Saturday as Crowe topped the field of 15 competitors by tallying a provisional mark of 4,766 points to repeat as RMAC Champion, and come away with 10 points for UCCS. Ellis made her way into the top-3 by racing to a time of 37:25.06 in the 10,000m to record 6 points for the women's team.
In the long jump, UCCS did some damage by combining for three podium finishes, four provisional marks and 32 team points (13 points with for the men, 19 points for the women) between the men's and women's teams. Junior Will Ross posted the top mark for the men's team by breaking the school record and taking silver with a provisional mark of 7.33m (8 points), as Derek Valdez just missed out on a podium spot as he finished fourth with a jump of 7.08m (5 points). As for the women, three Mountain Lions notched a 5.93m provisional mark as Hannah Meek took second (8 points), Jada Carr took third (6 points), and Crowe topped it off with fourth place (5 points).
On the track events side, the Mountain Lions will be well represented in the final races come Sunday to guarantee team points. The 4x100m will include black and gold as both the men's and women's teams made it into the finals. The women's 4x100m relay team of Shewli Ghosh, Nicole Morpurgo, Brittany Fuchs, and Kayla Zink went on to post the top time of 46.92s, as the men's team of Sam Repsher, Deshon Elcock, Caleb Simons, and Desmond Calhoun made their way into Sunday's final with the third best time of 41.92s.
The sprinters duo of Zink and Elcock made their marks on the 100m and 200m, as they each got it done in the prelims. Elcock enters Sunday with the fastest time in both the 100m (10.60s) and 200m (21.35s), with Zink registering automatic qualifying times for finals as the third fastest in the 100m (11.84s) and the second fastest in the 200m (24.75s). For the UCCS women's team, Zink will be joined by Ghosh and Fuchs in the 100m, as well as Fuchs and Dejah Glover in the 200m to make three of the top-8 competitors Mountain Lions in both races.
Defending 800m outdoor national Champion Skylyn Webb continues to best her competitors as she claimed the top times in both events she competed in on Saturday, qualifying for the final races. Her first event of the day was the women's 1500m where she ran to a time of 4:40.20. Webb's second event is her specialty, the 800m, where she bagged the best time of 2:15.86. Fellow middle-distance runners Ellie Enderle and Maia Austin also cracked the top-8 in the 800m with a fifth-place time of 2:19.12 and a seventh-place time of 2:17.10.
UCCS kept a smooth-running tally of Sunday qualifiers as the day went on with Charlie Forbes and Caleb Simons inking their names onto the list. Forbes separated himself from the competition in both the 110m hurdle prelims and the 400m hurdle prelims with a top seeded time in the 110m hurdles of 14.40s, and a top time of 55.08s in his heat for the 400m hurdles. Simons added his name to two final races as he snagged the eighth spot in the 400m (49.65s) and the seventh-place spot for the 200m (22.41s).
After scoring four points for the women's team with a fifth-place finish in the heptathlon (4,231 points), Aleksandra Anderson showed off her multi event talents once again by placing fourth in the 400m hurdles to compete in Sunday's final race. True freshman Grace Wenham will be getting her dose of RMAC Championship action as she joins Anderson in the 400m hurdle final after fighting her way into the eighth spot with a time of 1:05.48.
The third and final day of conference championships will begin on Sunday with the women's javelin and men's shot put bright and early at 8:30 a.m. Running events will start at 12:30 p.m. as the men's 4x100m relay finals.
