The Logger track teams travelled to McMinnville, Ore. last weekend for the Northwest Conference Track & Field finals. The women finished with 67 points, taking sixth place, while the men took seventh place with an 18 point finish, but several individual efforts put Loggers at or near the top in the conference.
On Friday, two Loggers competed in the men’s and women’s 10,000 meter runs, both taking fifth place in their respective events. Marnie Hazelhurst (Portland, Ore.) finished with a time of 39:22.27 while Matt Klein (Portland, Ore.) finished with a time of 33:25.94.
On day two of the meet, junior Andrea Leiken (Portland, Ore.) had a great performance, taking second place in the 200m and third in the 400m dash, finishing with times of 26.70 and 58.85, respectively. The 4x400m relay team, consisting of Leiken, fresnhman Alicia Burns (Spokane Valley, Wash.), senior Hayley Walker (Cambria, Calif.) and freshman Meg Gilbertson (Clackamas, Ore.), took second place with a final time of 4:02.91. Burns took home another second place finish in the 800m with a time of 2:20.28.
Other notable performances on the track included a fifth place finish 1500m run for Walker and an eight place finish in the 5000m run for senior Marnie Hazlehurst (Portland, Ore.). Junior Maya Heck (Corvallis, Ore.) claimed the top Logger finish in any field event when she cleared 9’8.5” in the pole vault.
For the men, sophomore Emerson Sample (Madison, Wisc.) took a fourth place finish, the Logger men’s top finish of the day, in the 400m hurdles with a final time of 57.62. The men’s 4x100m, made up of junior Daniel Clarke (Colgate, Wisc.), Michael Haas (Cupertino, Calif.), Chris Morrison (Lakewood, Wash.) and sophomore Lukas Diesing (Longmont, Colo.) finished in fifth place with a time of 44.30, just a bit over a second shy of the first place finishers. One week after winning the high jump at the Spike Arlt Invitational at Central Washington University, freshman Daniel Berendsen finished sixth in the Conference with a finals jump of 5’11.25”.
Many of the top finishers on both the men’s a women’s teams will return next spring, giving the Loggers hope for even greater team accomplishments next season.