Strang Wins Back-To-Back WAC Decathlon Championships
BOISE, Idaho – Utah State junior John Strang repeated as conference champion in the decathlon, locking up the Western Athletic Conference title for the second year in a row Thursday at the WAC Track & Field Championships, held at Boise, Idaho at Boise State’s Bronco Stadium.
Strang logged a personal-best 7,083 points, which is the third-most in school history. He also swept the multi-event titles this year after winning the heptathlon at the WAC indoor championships. Strang’s title means that the Aggies have won the individual WAC decathlon all three years that USU has been a member of the conference after senior teammate Logan Moore won the 2006 crown.
“This feels really good because it gets 10 points for our team,” Strang said. “It was just a really good milestone to get over 7,000 points, so I’m glad I got that. It’s just a combination of a great team and great coaches that make good things happen.”
Strang, a junior from Hawthorne, N.J. (Hawthorne HS), won two of Thursday’s five events after winning three on Wednesday.
“I’m always exciting when one of our athletes wins a conference championship,” USU head coach Gregg Gensel said. “For John, his goal at the beginning of the year was to win both indoor and outdoor multi-event championships and he’s accomplished that goal. He still has some loftier goals for this weekend, but we’ll cross that path when it comes, but John is just a competitor. He just wants to do things for the team and he’s just one of those great athletes that cares a lot about his teammates too.”
Senior Logan Moore (Wilton, Calif./Sacramento CC) won two of Thursday’s events after nabbing victory in one event the first day.
Moore, the 2006 decathlon champion who has bounced back from a season-ending knee injury last year, won the discus (136-06) and javelin (199-08) while finishing second in the 110m hurdles and fourth in the pole vault (13-07.25). He did not finish the 1,500m run due to having sixth-place locked up and not able to move up to fifth.
“Logan is a talented athlete, but he had that surgery and he hasn’t fully come back from that,” Gensel said. “We’re still very pleased with his performance and he earned points for the team.”
Strang won the 110m hurdles (14.64) and the 1,500m (5:00.20), while finishing third in both the discus (109-03) and pole vault (13-11.25) as well as fourth in the javelin (154-04).
“I was really inspired by Logan from coming back from his injury and being able to do what he did,” Strang said. “He would have definitely won again if he was at full strength from his knee injury.”
While Strang’s 7,083 points is third on the school top 10 list, topping his number six spot from last year with 6,770 points, he has lofty goals of going after the number one spot of 7,586 points, held by Joel Johnson in 2002. Johnson is currently an assistant coach for USU.
“The only points record that really matters is the top one and I’d want to get the top one because it is held by Coach Johnson,” Strang said.
His 7,083 points is also an NCAA regional qualifying mark, but he knows that he might not make it, especially after coming up five points short from qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Championships.
“I fell a few points short of what I wanted to get for national qualifying,” Strang said. “It doesn’t really mean as much because I don’t know for sure if I’ll get in after missing indoor by five points, so it doesn’t really mean anything.”
In the women’s heptathlon, senior Aimee Sauvageau finished eighth with 4,273 points while sophomore Jennifer Schiess was 10th at 4,155 points.
“We were hoping that they both would score but knew that was going to be a challenge, but they both put in great performances and I’m proud of them,” Gensel said. “Aimee is ending her heptathlon career scoring for the team, and she’ll be some open events this weekend. Jennifer still has other years to come. It’s not like she rolled over and died, she made a great effort.”
Sauvageau, a native of Pleasant View, Utah (Weber HS) was fifth in the 800m (2:31.49), ninth in the javelin (personal-best 88-06) and 10th in the long jump (15-00.75). Schiess, a Kaysville, Utah (Davis HS) native, was fourth in the javelin (103-10), ninth in the long jump (15-08.75) and 10th in the 800m (2:41.14).Annett Wichmann of Hawai’i won the heptathlon with 5,266 points.
The field events tip off Friday’s action at 12:30 p.m., opening with the men’s hammer, while the running events start at 2 p.m., led by the women’s 3,000m steeplechase. Saturday’s action begins at 12:30 p.m. with the field events, opening with the women’s hammer while the women’s 4x100m relay starts off the running events at 5 p.m.
Utah State’s men’s team is the defending WAC champion while the Aggie women were fifth last year. The USU men will be trying to become the first repeat conference men’s champions under the current conference alignment and the first overall since BYU in 1998 and 1999. In the history of the WAC, there have been eight repeat champions, with some repeating more than two years, highlighted by BYU’s nine in a row from 1985-93.
Live results for the 2008 WAC Championships are available through www.utahstateaggies.com as well as www.wacsports.com and clicking on the “live results” link.
For more information on the WAC Championships, including ticket information, go to www.wacsports.com.