The season-long goal of becoming more of a team in an ultimately individualistic sport finally manifested itself in a result this weekend at the Lumberjack Invitational in Flagstaff.
The ASU track and field team finished on top of the men’s and women’s team standings and won 13 individual events, including five event sweeps in the Sun Devils’ final tuneup before the indoor championship season starts next weekend in Seattle at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships.
The No. 20 women’s team accumulated 112 team points to best San Diego State’s 102 points and host Northern Arizona’s 67 points.
The men’s team put up 148 team points to beat NAU’s 105 points and Grand Canyon’s 60 points in the top three.
While currently unranked, the men’s team had some impressive point scoring sprints in its attempt to re-enter the Top 25, including two 1-2-3 finishes in the 200- and 400-meter dashes.
In addition to winning the 60-meter dash with an altitude adjusted time of 6.8 seconds, junior Daniel Auberry won the 200-meter dash with a time of 21.52 seconds.
Freshman William Henry was right on Auberry in second with a time of 21.53 seconds, and Kelsey Caesar’s 21.67 run put him in third.
Henry fell just short in the 200-meter, but captured the 400-meter with a time of 47.27, followed by Caesar at 47.40 seconds, and junior John Kline took third with a 47.9 second time.
The 200- and 400-meter were also the start of the sweeps for the Sun Devils, as on the women’s side senior Dominique’ Maloy captured the 200-meter race with a time of 23.9 seconds and sophomore Keia Pinnick took the 400-meter at 54.96 seconds.
The three other ASU sweeps came in the field portion of the meet, with the most interesting on the pole vault runway.
Shaylah Simpson took the women’s pole vault with a mark of four meters even, but the intrigue then shifted to the men.
The Sun Devils managed a three-way tie for first in the men’s pole vault as redshirt freshman Dylan Austin, redshirt senior Corey Phallen and redshirt sophomore Austin Prince all vaulted over the 4.91 meter mark.
Redshirt sophomore Jordan Clarke’s throw of 18.67 meters, sixth-best in ASU history, and redshirt freshman Anna Jelmini’s throw of 16.44 meters in men’s and women’s shot put, respectively, were good for the sweep.
The sweeps were rounded out in the high jump where senior Samantha Henderson cleared 1.64 meters to take the women’s event, and freshman Bryan McBride took the men’s side at 2.05 meters.
Reach the reporter at zcavanag@asu.edu
