Central’s Gray completes career pentathlon sweep
PELLA For the fourth time in as many tries, Central College women’s track and field senior Mary Gray (West Des Moines, Waukee HS) won the pentathlon title at the American Rivers Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships.
As a team, the Dutch scored 79 points and finished fifth in the standings. Wartburg College won the team title with 200 points.
“I think overall, we went out there and competed,” coach Brandon Sturman said. “Certain things just didn’t fall our way. We had some people overperform and some people struggled a little bit.”
Gray tallied 3,293 points and was a top-three finisher in all five disciplines, recording the best shot put mark of 36 feet, 4.25 inches. She now owns four indoor pentathlon conference titles and two outdoors in the heptathlon.
Final prep for conference track complete for Dutch women
PELLA The Central College women’s track and field team completed its indoor regular season Saturday afternoon in a triangular against Buena Vista University and Loras College.
Loras College won the team title with 111 points as Central finished second with 80. Buena Vista rounded it out with 72.
Central won six total events, including the 400-meter dash thanks to Hadyn Miller’s (freshman, Iowa Falls, Iowa Falls-Alden HS) winning time of 1:01.31
“Hadyn is finally making a breakthrough and feeling good,” Sturman said. “I think part of it is that she’s really getting into the training after missing some of the fall because of volleyball. She’s pumped and feeling good and we’re hopeful of what could happen at conference next week.”
The field events packed a punch for the Central College men’s indoor track and field team in winning a home triangular meet Saturday afternoon. Central tallied 116 points, outpacing Simpson’s 87 and Luther’s 74.
Remaining undefeated this season in the long jump and triple jump, Brock Lewis won both events. His triple jump reached 46 feet, 5.5 inches and he long jumped 23-0.75.
Central also had the winning pole vault (13-5.5) from Tanner Johnson and the top high jump (6-4) from Matt Riedemann.
Joe Stein had another strong weekend, winning both the 60-meter dash and 200-meter dash for the second week in a row. He matches his personal-best time in the 60-meter dash (6.95 seconds) and improved his 200-meter dash time to 22.57 seconds.