Monday, December 10, 2018

PORTLAND, Ore. – The indoor track and field season may only be two weeks old, but the Central Washington women's team is wasting no time making noise.

Led by a record-setting performance from junior Halle Irvine, the Wildcats shined over the weekend at the Jackson's Open in Nampa. The showing earned CWU the selection as GNAC Team of the Week.

Head coach Kevin Adkisson's team was led by Irvine, who took first in the pole vault and hit a provisional marker with a jump of 12 feet, 10.75 inches. The jump set a new GNAC and school record, passing Central Washington's McKenna Emmert's and Western Washington's Anna Paradee's mark of 12 feet, 10.25 inches in 2017. It is currently the leading jump in Division II.

For Adkisson, standout performances up and down his roster is a welcome sight this early into the 2018-19 campaign.

"I am really pleased to see the women getting recognized early," Adkisson said. "It's a great sign for us as a whole that we're where we'd like to be as we enter indoor season. The squad has worked really hard through the fall and to have solid marks for several people is really encouraging."

Those solid marks included NCAA Championships provisional qualifying marks over the weekend from seniors Mariyah Vongsaveng and Brooke Williams. Vongsaveng hit the mark in the 60-meter hurdles and took second place at a time of 8.66 seconds, while Williams placed first in the women's long jump at 18 feet, 9 inches.

In addition, Vongsaveng won the women's 200-meter dash with a time of 25.87 seconds.

"It is just wild to be in that position," the head coach said on his team's early provisional marks. "These are our top performers who we expect to do well, but it is still great to see them have this kind of start."

Junior Erykah Weems rounded out a strong performance for the Wildcats, leading a top-three sweep in the 400 meters with a first-place time of 57.86 seconds. She also placed seventh in the 60-meter hurdles and had a time of 9.32 seconds in the preliminaries.

Central Washington will look to carry its early-season momentum into the new year, when it returns to competition on January 11-12 at the Idaho Vandals Invitational in Moscow, Idaho. The meet will be the first of three for the Wildcats in the first month of 2019.