Montana
Montana State
Griz begin annual late-season surge
2/11/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Indoor Track, Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field
Feb. 11, 2012
Aided by a strong showing from its distance runners and jumpers, the Montana track and field teams posted eight individual-event victories and eight new Big Sky Conference qualifications Friday night at the Bozeman Running Company Invitational at Bozeman, Mont.
The Grizzlies swept the men's and women's 400 meters and high jump on the weekend that is becoming the team's start to its annual late-season push toward the Big Sky Conference indoor championships. This year's Big Sky meet opens in two weeks at Flagstaff, Ariz.
"It takes our track athletes this long to really get rolling, so this is the weekend every year when we seem to get it going as a team," UM track and field program director Brian Schweyen said.
"We performed pretty well, so I think we're on track."
The men's team had an important breakout meet. The Grizzlies entered the meet with just four Big Sky qualifications. They added six more Friday from five different athletes, and got season-best efforts from two of the previous qualifiers.
Senior Lynn Reynolds had a statement race in the 3,000 meters, running a career best and taking 20 seconds off his season best to edge out MSU's Carl Nystuen at the tape. Reynolds' altitude-adjusted time was 8:23.30.
His time also gave Reynolds a 5,000-meter qualification, an event sophomore Jordan Collison qualified for with his third-place 3,000-meter time of 8:32.67.
With the drop of his times through the 1:50s in the 800 meters, freshman David Norris is symbolic of the track group's ongoing improvement. Norris opened the season with a 2:02, then went 1:57 and 1:55 at the team's last two meets.
Friday Norris ran an altitude-adjusted 1:54.39 to finish third and meet the qualifying standard of 1:54.50.
The team's other two qualifiers, both sophomores and both point scorers last winter as true freshmen, will be making their second trip to the Big Sky indoor championships.
Drew Owens joins freshman Dylan Hambright as Montana's qualifiers in the 400 meters. Owens, who was seventh at last year's indoor championships, ran an altitude-adjusted 49.07 to finish third in the event behind Hambright and Weber State's Dustin Durfee.
Hambright lowered his season-best time to an altitude-adjusted 48.57, which has him ranked in the top six in the Big Sky.
Kaleb Horlick, who tied for seventh last winter, qualified in the pole vault with a fourth-place effort of 15-5.
Junior Keith Webber won the pole vault at a height of 16-0.75. It was the second consecutive meet Webber has broken 16 feet.
Freshman Lee Hardt continued to inch his way toward breaking the seven-foot barrier by winning the high jump at a season-best height of 6-11, and the team's 4x400-meter relay foursome of Hambright, Owens, Norris and freshman Rex Quartarone dropped its season-best time by over three seconds to an altitude-adjusted 3:19.32.
The Montana women's team was already loaded with qualifiers before Friday's meet, but freshman Allie Parks added to the team's depth. She ran an altitude-adjusted 10:08.73 in the 3,000 meters to qualify for both that event and the 5,000 meters.
Parks finished fourth in what was the tightest distance event of the day. Less than five seconds separated winner Kayla Blackford of Weber State and the fourth-place Parks.
The women had four event winners. Junior Anika Green won the 55-meter hurdles in an altitude-adjusted time of 8.10, a PR by one-hundredth of a second, junior Kourtney Danreuther stayed perfect in the 400 meters this winter with an altitude-adjusted time of 55.34, junior Gwenn Abbott won the high jump (5-5.75), and sophomore Kellee Glaus won the triple jump (37-6.75).
Senior Courtney Kosovich and freshman Hannah Swift, two of the Big Sky's top eight pole vaulters, both went 12-0 to finish third and fourth, and like Norris in the men's 800, freshman Ani Haas has shown similar improvement in her own times as the indoor season has progressed.
She opened the season at 2:25, dropped that to 2:20 last weekend, then Friday finished third with an altitude-adjusted time of 2:17.21.
The meet was the final one of the indoor season for Montana's full team prior to the Big Sky championships. A partial team will return to Bozeman next Friday for MSU's last-chance meet.
