BELLINGHAM, Wash. – After a week off from competition, the Western Washington University track & field program returns to the Dempsey Indoor facility at the University of Washington for the UW Invitational held Friday and Saturday.
WWU opened the indoor season at the UW Preview two weeks ago, and will be back at Dempsey Indoor for the second of five trips to the facility. The indoor schedule also features the UW FloTrack Classic (Feb. 9-10), UW Open (Feb. 11) and SPU Final Qualifier (Feb. 24) at Dempsey Indoor. WWU’s lone indoor meet elsewhere, aside from the GNAC Indoor Championships and NCAA II Championships, will be the Cougar Indoor (Feb. 2-3) at the WSU Indoor Facility in Pullman, Wash.
Competition at the UW Invitational begins Friday with the men’s heptathlon (1 pm) and women’s pentathlon (1:30 pm), although WWU does not have any student-athletes entered in multi events. Running events begin at 4 pm while field events start at 5 pm on Friday with the last schedule event set for 9:15 pm.
On Saturday, competition resumes with a 9 am start for running events and a 10 am start for field events. The last event of the day is scheduled for 5:35 pm. WWU has a total of 65 entries for the UW Invitational and will compete both days.
The season-opening UW Preview two weekends ago featured an NCAA II provisional-qualifying mark for seniorJasmine McMullin (Sequim, WA) in the triple jump and nine program top-10 marks for the Vikings.
McMullin had a leap of 12.00m (39-4 ½) in the triple jump to place 3rd as the top NCAA Division II placer among 18 competitors. A two-time GNAC indoor triple jump champion and All-American in the triple jump during 2016, her leap on Saturday was within a foot of her indoor personal best (12.22m/40-1 ¼), which is the WWU indoor record. Her jump at the UW Preview is the 6th-best mark within NCAA Division II this season.
Additionally on the women’s side, freshman Claire Hansen (Federal Way, WA/Todd Beamer) placed 17th in the preliminaries of the 60m hurdles with a time of 9.26, 5th-best in WWU history. Freshman Kelsey McLean (Kirkland, WA/Juanita) finished 31st in the 60m preliminaries with a time of 8.01, 10th-fastest in WWU history while sophomoreSophia Galvez (Los Alamos, NM) was 42nd in the 3,000m with a time of 10:24.29 to post the 8th-best time in WWU history.
WWU throwers posted five program top-10 marks, with two on the women’s side and three on the men’s side. For the women, junior Sophia Roberts (Ventura, CA) placed 19th in the weight throw (13.39m/43-11 ¼) for the 3rd-best WWU mark while freshman Kiana Schwendeman (Bonney Lake, WA) placed 29th (12.28m/40-3 ½) for the 9th-best mark.
On the men’s side, freshman Ben Malquist (Bellingham, WA/Sehome) finished 11th in the shot put with a mark of 15.15m (49-8 ½) for the 7th-best WWU mark while freshman Bryce Bryant-Leat (Spokane, WA/Lewis and Clark) finished 15th (14.66m/48-1 ¼) with the 10th-best mark. Freshman Avery Lux (Fort Collings, CO/Fossil Ridge) was 16th in the weight throw at a distance of 13.95m (45-9 ¼) to enter the WWU top 10 at No. 8.
Junior Tupre Wickliff (Vancouver, WA/Evergreen/Clark) placed 7th in the high jump with a leap of 1.95m (6-4 ¾) to enter the WWU top-10 record books at No. 8.
Coming Up: WWU travels across the state next weekend to the Cougar Indoor, held Feb. 2-3 in Pullman, Wash. The meet is hosted by Washington State University at the WSU Indoor Facility.
