While the pockets of rain that fell during Saturday's Sun Angel Classic were a surprise, the ASU track and field team's success in the relays was anything but, as the Sun Devils brought home victories in three of the four relays in men's and women's competitions.
Despite a 43-minute delay because of the sudden rain and varied wind speeds that head coach Greg Kraft thought prevented times from being "earth shattering," the relay teams were their dominating selves.
On the men's side, the 4x100m team of Steven Koehnemann, Domenik Peterson, Seth Amoo and Lewis Banda blazed their way to a time of 39.40 to win the event, while Peterson, Amoo and Lewis teamed with Jason Barton to win the 4x400m relay with a time of 3:03.97.
Peterson also took home a gold with a time of 20.62 in the 200m, the eighth-fastest time in school history.
Two ASU runners came up short in one of the closer sprints of the night -- the men's 400m dash. Banda and Barton finished second and third respectively, with Banda falling just two hundredths of a second shy of Baylor's Jeremy Wariner.
For the second time in a row at home, Trevell Quinely won the high jump, clearing 2.15m.
In what proved to be the most exciting race of the night, the men's 3000m steeplechase, two longtime rivals, ASU's Aaron Aguayo and Anasazi Track Club's Jose Campos went to a photo finish -- with Campos winning by one hundredth of a second.
The competition between the two dates back to high school, when Aguayo, of Phoenix Mountain Pointe High School, dueled with Campos' Highland High School in Gilbert.
Aguayo led most of the race until Campos found something left in the tank to overtake him with about 500m to go, and Aguayo never regained his lead.
"I just tried to feed off the crowd because we had a good showing...and coming down that last 200 (meters), I knew I wasn't going to be happy with second place," Aguayo said. "I just poured it all out, trying to get the win."
Gilreath sets new American record
Erin Gilreath of the New York Athletic Club had the toss of her life in the hammer at the start of the meet, setting a new American record with a hurl of 72.12m. The new mark surpassed the previous record set by Anna Norgen-Mahon last year at 71.33m.
Reach the reporter at jeffrey.hoodzow@asu.edu.
