Cougar Women Repeat Team Title

College track and field

Washington State hit another jackpot in Reno on Saturday.

Behind individual victories by Whitney Evans, Sharika Higgins and Agneta Rosenblad, the Cougars won a second straight women’s team title at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation indoor track and field championships at the Reno Livestock Event Center in Reno, Nev.

WSU scored 136.5 points for a 20-point margin over runner-up Stanford in an 11-team field of Pac-10 and Big West teams. Stanford won the men’s title with 142 points, the Cougars finishing fourth with 82.

After Cicely Clinkenbeard (triple jump) and Becky Potter (weight throw) won individual events on Friday, the Cougars pulled ahead of Stanford with a strong showing in Saturday’s short races.

Higgins won the 200 meters in 24.13 seconds, leading a 1-3-4 Cougars finish, as well as finishing third in the 55-meter finals. She also ran a leg on WSU’s 4x400 relay team which nipped Arizona for first in 3:44.85.

Evans defended her high jump championship with a winning leap of 5 feet, 11-1/2 inches, while Rosenblad claimed the 55 hurdles in 7.90 - the Cougars finishing 1-3-6-7.

On the men’s side, Arend Watkins broke his 20-hour-old meet record in the 55 hurdles by .02 seconds with a 7.23 clocking - becoming one of two WSU champions on Saturday. Ian Waltz was an easy winner in the shot put, his 61-9 heave a good 4 feet better than the rest of the field. With Demetrius Murray winning the triple jump on Friday, that gave WSU three individual men’s champions.

WSU also pulled a mild upset in winning the 4x400 relay in 3:15.15, 2 seconds ahead of Arizona.

Big Sky

Eastern Washington sprinter Johnnie Williams was selected as athlete of the meet in Flagstaff, Ariz., as the Eagles men posted their highest finish, fifth place, in the Big Sky Conference indoor championships.

Host Northern Arizona won both the men’s and women’s team titles over runner-up Weber State. Eastern’s women were seventh.

Williams, a junior from Seattle, won the 55 meters in 6.25 seconds, equaling the school record he set in Friday’s prelims. He came back to capture the 200 in another school record, 21.37, and anchored Easern’s 4x400 relay which finished fifth.

Williams’ wins, along with a Friday triumph in the women’s weight throw by Jaime Martin, were Eastern’s only individual titles. But the Eagles had some other notable efforts Saturday.

Kurt Kraemer placed third in the triple jump with a school-record leap of 51-7-1/4, which also exceeded the NCAA provisional qualifying standard. Steve Carey, who set a school record with a 47.95 clocking in the 400 prelims, finished fourth in the finals in 48.05.

NWC Relays

Whitworth had a successful outdoor opener, winning 13 of 33 team events in the Northwest Conference Relays at Newberg, Ore.

Individual winners for the Pirates included Navin Fernandes (men’s 110 hurdles, 15.27), Aaron Baldwin (triple jump, 41-3), Nichole Marich (women’s shot put, 34-4-1/4), Elysia Hanna (discus, 112-3) and Danielle Swift (javelin, 130-4).