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LEVELLAND, Texas – Spencer Amerin tied for third in the men’s high jump on Thursday to close out the Region VI/Jayhawk West champion Hutchinson Community College men’s track and field team’s run at the 2012 NJCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at South Plains College.
The Blue Dragon men scored in five events on Friday to finish the national championships in eighth place with 38.25 points. South Plains won the men’s team championship with 163 points.
Emily Yoder was the top HCC women’s player on Thursday, taking fifth in the women’s javelin. The Lady Dragons scored 14 points to tie for 14th place. South Plains won the women’s team title with 184.50 points.
Amerin tied with three others at a height of 6 feet, 11 inches, which is just one-half inch of his career best. A pair of high jumpers cleared 7 feet with Iowa Central’s James White winning the event at 7 feet, 3 inches.
Cody Howell tied for seventh in the high jump with a personal best 6 feet, 9 inches. Ten different high jumpers reached 6-9.
Sophomore Robert Whitfield completed his Blue Dragon career with a personal best in the men’s long jump. Whitfield finished seventh overall with a jump of 24 feet, 5 inches.
Lex Parsons cleared 14 feet, 10 3/4 inches to score two points in a seventh-place finish in the men’s pole vault. Dakota Becker finished 11th in the pole vault at 14-4 3/4.
Freshman Skylar Arneson was the other Blue Dragon scorer on Thursday. One day after taking third in the shot put, Arneson placed eighth in the men’s discus with a throw of 160 feet. Robert Dunn set a personal best with the 11th-best throw in Blue Dragon history at 157 feet, 4 inches to finish ninth. Brandon Koenigsman was 13th at 150 feet, 1 inch.
Yoder was the top Region VI athlete in the women’s javelin, finishing fifth with a distance of 110 feet, two inches. The winning throw was more than 141 feet.
Indoor national high jump champion Cassie Wiley didn’t fare so well in the outdoor championships, finishing 10th after clearing 5-5 on Thursday. Wiley has been battling injuries through most of the last month.
Sophomore Sarah Talbert led three Lady Dragons in the women’s discus with a 10th-place finish at 140-11. Emily Yoder was 13th at 125-11 and Ashley Lorence was 16th at 119-1.
Next year, the NJCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships return to Gowans Stadium.
(HCC Sports Information)
LEVELLAND, Texas – Freshman Page Stuhlsatz completed a memorable freshman year, while teammate Skylar Arneson continued the Hutchinson Community College men’s track and field team’s strong showing in the field events on Wednesday at the 2012 NJCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships at South Plains College.
Stuhlsatz added a second All-America designation this season in becoming the national runner-up in the women’s pole vault on Wednesday. Arneson earned the Blue Dragon men’s second top-three finish at nationals in as many days with a national runner-up showing in the men’s shot put on Wednesday.
Entering Thursday’s final day of competition, Hutchinson’s men are third in the team standings with 27 points. Coffeyville leads the team race with 44 points and Central Arizona is second with 40. The Lady Dragons are tied for ninth place with Butler and Macomb with 10 points.
In her last several events Stuhlsatz flirted with the 12-foot plateau and had several close calls. On Wednesday, the Garden Plain native not only reached the 12-foot mark, but broke the school record by clearing 12 feet, 1 1/2 inches.
Only one vaulter topped Stuhlsatz in the women’s pole vault on Wednesday, the same vaulter who defeated her at the NJCAA indoor national championships, Vincennes University’s Natalia Bartnovskaya, who defended her national championship that she first won last year at Gowans Stadium by clearing 13-9 3/4
Hutchinson’s other national second-place finish came from Arneson, who made up for a rough day on Tuesday when he fouled all three times in the hammer throw. On Wednesday, Arneson uncorked the fourth-best shot put in team history with a personal best 53 feet, 4 1/2 inches. Glendale Kyle Little won the men’s shot put with a distance of 54-6 1/2.
Evan Moore also scored in the shot put for the Blue Dragons, finishing seventh at 51-1 1/2.
The Blue Dragons had one more top-three finish on Day 2 of the championships when the men’s 4x800-meter relay finished third with a time of 7 minutes, 47.14 seconds. That time posted by Skylar Gutierrez, Isaac Williams, Brandon Massey and Julio Martinez ran the fifth-best time in program history.
One school record fell on Wednesday, but the HCC men’s 4x100 relay team ran a time of 40.82 seconds. But for the relay team of Rashawn Baker, Donnie Woods, Juwan Cubit and Cordarrelle Patterson, the record was a bit hollow as the Blue Dragons finished ninth in the preliminaries and just out of Thursday’s finals.
Other Blue Dragon performances on Wednesday:
+ John Siale took sixth in the men’s javelin with a throw of 168-6. Blake Withrow was ninth at 147-6.
+ Sophomore Autumn Iverson placed seventh in the women’s shot put with a distance of 44-1 1/4.
+ Sophomore Robert Whitfield placed seventh in the triple jump with a leap of 48 feet, ¾-inch.
+ Sprinter Cordarrelle Patterson made the 100-meter finals and missed in the 200. Patterson posted the eighth-best qualifying time on Wednesday in the 100 with a time of 10.62 seconds. His 200-meter time was 21.87 seconds, which was 18th.
+ Juwan Cubit didn’t qualify for the 200-meter finals with a 31st-place time of 27.13 seconds.
+ Sophomore Julio Martinez missed qualifying for the finals in the 800 meters after posting a time of 2:06.53, which was 28th.
+ Freshman Bre Bennette was 16th in the women’s triple jump after going 34-9 ½.
+ Withrow finished ninth in the Decathlon with a total of 5,567 points. Karson Becker was 10th with 5,563 points.
The 2012 NJCAA championships conclude on Thursday.
(HCC Sports Information)
LEVELLAND, Texas – Sophomore Weston Cottrell got the Region VI/Jayhawk West champion Hutchinson Community College men’s track and field team off to a great start on Tuesday at the NJCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships at South Plains College.
Cottrell posted a personal best and the third-best hammer throw in Blue Dragon history to finish third in the nation on Day 1 of the three-day championship event. Cottrell had only one good throw on Tuesday in six attempts, but made it count with a distance of 178 feet, 6 inches, which came on his second attempt in the preliminary round.
The Blue Dragons had three qualifiers in the hammer. Robert Dunn finished 13th overall with a top throw of 157-1. Freshman Skylar Arneson fouled on all three throws in the preliminaries.
After the first day in the NJCAA Decathlon, HCC’s Blake Withrow, the Region VI champion, is ninth after five events with 3,124 points. Karson Becker is 12th in the field of 16 with 2,988 points.
Withrow totaled 677 points in the 100 meters with a time of 11.87 seconds, 604 points in the long jump with a distance of 19-11 1/2, 560 points in the shot put with a throw of 36-10 1/2, 610 points in the high jump after clearing 5-10 and 673 points in the 400 meters with a time of 53.21 seconds.
Becker scored 655 points in the 100 meters with a time of 11.98 seconds, scored 527 points in the long jump at 18 feet, 9 ¼ inches; 497 points in the shot put at 33-5 ¼, 636 points in the high jump after clearing 5-11 ¼ and 673 points after a time of 53.19 seconds in the 400 meters.
Only one HCC women’s national qualifier competed on Tuesday.
Emily Yoder finished 12th in the women’s hammer after a throw of 136 feet, 8 inches.
The completion of the Decathlon, selection field event finals and track preliminaries will take place on Wednesday during Day 2 of the championships.
(HCC Sports Information
