Friday, February 17, 2012

Seattle Pacific's Ali Worthen became the all-time leading women's point scorer in the history of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Indoor Track and Field championship meet Friday finishing first in the long jump with a leap of 18-9 1/4. 

Worthen, who won the long jump for the third time (2009, 2011 and 2012), increased her all-time career point total to 82 breaking the mark of 76 set by SPU's Jessica Pixler between 2007 and 2010.

She was one of three individual record-setters Friday at Jackson's Track in Nampa, Idaho, along with Brennan Boyes of Central Washington and Katy Gross of SPU. Simon Fraser's men's distance medley relay team also set a meet record.

Boyes won his second high jump title in three years setting a meet record with a winning mark of 6-9. He took the title in a jump-off with Logan Myers of Western Washington after both athletes had cleared 6-8.

Boyes, who won his first title in 2010, broke the meet record of 6-8 3/4 set five years ago by Cameron Bailey of CWU.

Gross won the pentathlon with a meet record score of 3,469 points, improving on her winning score last year of 3,297, which was the first year the event had been contested.

Joy Warrington of Northwest Nazarene, Kati Davis and Manny Melo both of Central Washington, Tanner Rottrup of Montana State Billings and both of Simon Fraser's distance medley relay foursomes were also winners.

Warrington, who also finished first in 2010, won the women's weight throw with a toss of 53-1.

Melo took the title in the long jump with a leap of 23-2 3/4, edging out two former WOU long jump champions - Matson Hardie (2010) and Kyle Lane (2011) who finished second (23-1 3/4) and third (23-0 3/4), respectively.

Davis won the women's pole vault with a mark of 12-5 1/2 winning on fewer misses over Karis Anderson of Western Washington. Both athletes added five inches to their previous provisional national qualifying marks establishing marks that rank second in GNAC history.

Rottrup won the men's shot with a put of 50-2 capping the best day in MSUB history at the conference meet.

Rottrup became the first Yellowjacket to win a title in the meet's history and MSUB's men's point total of 23 was more than its previous best of 16 in the 2010 meet.

Its women also scored 23 points, which already is its second highest total trailing only the 30 1/2 points it earned at the 2011 meet.

MSUB finished Day 1 of the two-day meet in third place in the men's division, trailing only Central Washington (41) and Western Washington (31 1/2).

The 'Jacket women are tied for fourth with Central Washington behind nine-time defending champion Seattle Pacific (41), Western Washington (34) and Northwest Nazarene (32).

Simon Fraser won the two distance medley relay events. Ryan Brockerville, Stuart Ellenwood, Keir Forster and Adam Reid won the men's race in a meet record time of 10:04.56, while Lindsay Butterworth, Michaela Kane, Sara Sawatzky and Abbey Vogt won the women's relay in a time of 12:11.42.