Sam Serrano decided to put an exclamation point on her career in the final hammer throw of her career by breaking her own Illinois State record with a mark of 180-7 at the Missouri Valley Conference Outdoor Championships in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The throw, her third of the preliminaries, earned her second in the competition and passed her old mark of 180-4, which she set in 2000.
Stacia Beste picked up the seventh Valley track and field title of her career when she won the womens 5,000-meter run with a season-best time of 17:20.96. Beste also won the 10,000-meter run Thursday with a time of 37:11.42. Following the meet, Beste was named the Valleys Most Outstanding Female Track Athlete.
Illinois State finished third on the mens side with 86 points and also on the womens with 101.5 points. Wichita State won the mens competition with 166.3 points, while Southwest Missouri State was the Valley champion for the women with 147 points.
The mens mile relay team, consisting of Miklos Konkoly, Gabriel Cruz, Robert Beach and Dan Schrock, got the point they needed in the final event of the meet with a sixth place finish and a time of 3:20.39 to beat out Indiana State by two-thirds of a point for the third-place finish.
We went to war at this meet, said head coach Jeff Pigg, following the championships. We fought hard and that was the most important thing. Some people may look at our finish and think that we should be disappointed, but this is a strong conference and even when we were beat our kids made their opponents work hard for it.
The 800-meter run proved to be an exciting event for Illinois State fans on both the mens and the womens sides. Miklos Konkoly was the Valley champion by three-hundredths of a second in the mens race with a time of 1:52.42, while teammate Gabriel Cruz claimed fifth with a time of 1:52.95.
In the womens race, three of the four 800 meter finals participants finished in the top four with Andrea Black leading the pack with a second-place finish and a season-best time of 2:14.12. Jene Klostermann and Lauren Ritt finished third and fourth respectively with times of 2:14.42 and 2:15.51. Egle Kregzdyte was seventh with a 2:18.15.
In the final event for the womens meet, Illinois State needed at least a third place finish in the mile relay to finish third as a team. Andrea Black, Keri Davis, Lindsey Arnold and Ritt answered the call and turned in a season-best time of 3:50.02.
I told the girl before the race that if they finished third (in the mile relay), we would finish third as a team, if not, we would finish fourth, said Pigg. The girls responded well and brought it home.
Gergely Bata was second place in the finals of the mens high jump with a career-best jump of 6-10 . Robert Breit and Walter Ogola finish third (15:19.30) and fourth (15:21.86) respectively in the 5,000 meter run to earn valuable points for the Birds in the second to last scored event in the meet for ISU.
Sam (Serrano) set the pace for us today by breaking the school record to start the day, mentioned Pigg. All day at pivotal points in the meet, we had a lot of exciting things happen. It was one thing after another. Miklos and Gabes finishes in the 800 were huge because those two guys are both freshman and the field was loaded.
Rob (Breit) and Walter (Ogola) in the 5,000 were tremendous, continued Pigg. Rob just went out and ran like a champ after being disappointed in his performance in the 10,000 (meter run) a couple nights ago.
Alfie Gordillo concluded his stellar career as a Redbird thrower with a third place finish in the shot put with a season-best mark of 54-4 .
Chivas Hemphill and JaRod Tobler both finished with outdoor career-bests in the mens triple jump with marks of 50-1 and 49-6 respectively. Hemphill finished in fourth place overall, while Tobler finished sixth.
Freshman Angie Drew was a sixth place finisher in the womens 100-meter hurdles finals with a time of 14.85.
The womens 4x100 meter relay team of Lindsey Arnold, Alia Hoyle, Keri Davis and Nicole Blow claimed a season-best time of 47.74, which was good enough for sixth place. The mens 4x100 relay team of Bryan Smith, Quincy Washington, Robert Beach and Mark Walcott finished fifth with a time of 42.56.
Complete results of the 2002 Missouri Valley Outdoor Championships are available on-line at www.unipanthers.com.
