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.
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.
Wartburg at No. 2.
Loras to No. 4.
Central (Iowa) joins the top-5 for the first time this season at No. 5.
The Eagles flooded the Descending Order List this past weekend with huge marks. UW-La Crosse now holds 19 national top-10 marks, including national-leading efforts in the triple jump from
Jessica Stelzner at 11.66m (38-3¼) and in the weight throw from
Skye Digman at 16.96m (55-7¾). The Eagles have multiple top-10 marks in several events: 60 (x3), 400 (x2), 60H (x2), long jump (x2), triple jump (x2) and weight throw (x2).
The Knights made quick work of the competition this past weekend, specifically in the 400 and pentathlon. Wartburg notched two top-6 marks in the 400 from
Mary Gray and Kiki Pingel secured 12 team points and moved up the Central College women’s track and field top-10 board in the pentathlon Friday at the Wartburg Indoor Select meet. On the men’s side Nick Thompson and Lucas Heitz are positioned atop the heptathlon standings after the first four events.
Gray finished the five-discipline event with 3,455 points to win the crown. Pingel added 150 points to her previous career-best mark to place second with 3,384 points. The duo combined for six personal-best marks, each setting new standards in the long jump, shot put and 60-meter hurdles. Pingel is now No. 4 all-time in the 60 hurdles (9.07 seconds) and Gray is No. 5 (9.13). Gray is No. 9 in the long jump (17 feet, 5.5 inches) with Pingel right behind her at 17-5.25. In the shot put, Gray reached 35-11.5 and Pingel made it 34-4.