Hawkins, Bowen pace Aggies at MWC track championships
The Utah State track and field team competed in the Mountain West Indoor Track and Field Championships at the Cadet Field House on the Air Force Academy Campus in Colorado Springs, Colorado over the weekend.
Two nationally ranked Aggies came away with honors. Chari Hawkins and Nic Bowens oth set new MWC records and won their events.
Utah State ran wild on day three but couldn’t overcome the large deficit to win. New Mexico came out on top in the men’s division with a team score of 166.5. The USU men scored 109.5 and earned a fourth-place finish.
New Mexico showed complete dominance and also won the women’s title scoring with 148.5 points. Utah State women came in sixth overall, putting up 58 points.
Spurred forward by junior Chari Hawkins, who won the women’s pentathlon and set a new MWC record with 4,173 points, the women’s team gave all they had earning 10 team points good enough for second-place overall to end day one.
On the men’s side of things USU’s Bradford Strobell, a freshman, took sixth in the heptathlon event scoring 4,583 points. Colorado State’s Justin Green scored 5,575 winning first while his teammate Josh Cogdill put up 5,349 placing second.
Senior Alex Litzsinger helped the USU women earn by placing fourth in the 5,000 meter run with her time of 18:37.75. Teammates Ashley Robison, Karlee Deeter and Jacqueline Winterton placed 11th, 15th and 16th, respectively.
The Utah State women also took home sixth place in the distance medley run. Brittany Bushman, Mikkell Minnoch, Tori Parkinson and Cierra Simmons combined for a 12:31.18. Women from Nevada, New Mexico and Air Force finished first, second, and third.
To cap off the three day competition, USU had five first-place finishes and two podium sweeps. Nic Bowens, who set a MWC record in the 60 meter dash and won both the 60 and 200 meter dash. Parker Bluth took third in the 200 and second in the 60, while Silas Pimentel completed the sweep placing second and third in the same sprints. USU’s Cole Lambourne was able to put together a good third day as well winning the 400 meter dash.
“We had a lot of great performances with our team members,” said head coach Greg Gensel, now in his 32nd year of coaching at USU. “(We) ended up with both the men’s and women’s athlete of the meet, we’re definitely going in the right direction as far as how we want to be competitive in this conference.”
Other notable performances from the final day included Chari Hawkins continuing to show her strengths by placing second in the womens high jump and 60 meter hurdles. Rachel Orr won in high jump earning 10 team points for a first place finish. Senior Eric Shellhorn won in the mile run his time 4:12.10.
The NCAA Indoor Championships will be held March 14th-15th competition in Albuquerque, N.M.