Eagles scrape sky in vault to place third

The riches were in the vault for Eastern Washington on Saturday.

Behind senior Mike Erickson’s school-record leap, Eastern Washington used a 1-2-3 finish in the pole vault to equal its best showing at the Big Sky Conference track and field championships in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Erickson – whose season best had been just 15 feet, 1 inch – soared 16-71/4 to add a quarter-inch to Todd Freitag’s 17-year-old school standard. Behind Erickson, the gains were just as dramatic. Mike Krings, a junior transfer from Community Colleges of Spokane, added more than a foot to his personal best to finish second at 16-3/4, the same mark as freshman teammate Mike Uhlenkott who topped the 16-foot mark for the first time.

The Eagles totaled 105 points to finish behind champion Montana State (169) and Weber State (113). EWU placed sixth in the women’s competition won by Northern Arizona.

The women had an unexpected champion in sophomore Jamie Griffith, who won the 400-meter hurdles in 1 minute, 1.20 seconds. Griffith hadn’t run the event until this month. The final was just her fourth race – and a competitive one, too, with the top five runners all less than 62 seconds.

Another top performance for the Eagles women was a school-record lead in the triple jump by sophomore Teanna Meinhold. Held out of competition until late April by injury, Meinhold bounded 39-7 to finish third.

EWU’s men got a third in the triple jump from Billy Grubbs (48-10) and fourths from javelin thrower Zach Guydish (209-11) and Branden Fuller, who followed Friday’s runner-up finish in the steeplechase with a 3:59.53 clocking in the 1,500.

•Robin Mikesh cleared a lifetime best 5-10 and triggered a wave of Washington State points in the high jump to highlight the Cougars’ first day at the Pacific-10 Conference championships at Los Angeles.

Mikesh won on the basis of fewer misses over Oregon’s Lauryn Jordan, while Cougars Julie and Diane Pickler and McKinnon Hansen all cracked the top eight to net WSU 201/2 points. That boosted the Cougars into second place behind Stanford in the women’s competition.

On the men’s side, WSU is bringing up the rear behind first-day leader Oregon – the Cougars hurt by the loss of pole vaulter Tyson Byers, who pulled a hamstring in a meet last month and is not yet ready to compete.

In addition to the high jump, WSU’s other big score came in the women’s javelin. Jenna Dean and Rachel Bertholf moved up from third and sixth in the prelims to finish second and fourth, Dean getting off a best of 168-11 and Bertholf throwing 154-10.

•Russ Winger took flight at the Big West Conference track and field championships, adding the discus title to the shot put crown he won on Friday.

The Vandals, bound for the Western Athletic Conference next year, finished fourth among men’s teams and seventh among women in the meet in Irvine, Calif., where Cal State Northridge and UC Santa Barbara captured the team titles.

Winger was one of three Vandals who won individual titles on the final day, adding more than 4 feet to his lifetime best with a spin of 188-9. He was joined on the top step by senior Pat Ray of Spokane, who defended his title in the men’s 200, and Mary Kamau who claimed the women’s 1,500 (4:20.02) and came back to set a school record of 2:05.96 while finishing second in the 800.

Ray, who has battled illness and injury the last month of the season, won the 200 in 21.25, took seventh in the 100 and ran legs on Idaho’s relay teams, which both finished third.

•Whitworth’s Aaron Coe and Kristi Dickey won the men’s and women’s 10,000 at the Ken Foreman Invitational in Seattle.

Jason Dixon of Community Colleges of Spokane won the discus at 170-5, while Colville graduate Shannon McGrane of Willamette took the women’s 400 in 1:00.95.