Brenton Emmons made his case as a big meet pole vaulter today, winning the Simplot Games pole vault title. Colorado Track XC file photo by Alan Versaw.
If you were counting on the prelims to tell you what the order of finish would be for finals, you came in for a lot of rough rides on Saturday afternoon.
As it turned out, Thursday and Friday ended up as mostly deception. And it went both ways, sometimes toward stunning surprises for Colorado athletes, and sometimes for deep disappointments.
The big win for Colorado was Javan Lanier in the the 60 meters at 6.81, up from second in prelims. That ratchets Mr. Lanier a few notches up in the national rankings. Similarly, Chris Youngs moved from third in prelims to second in finals at 6.90. But, Kent Harris couldn't make his prelim winner stand, going to 8th in finals. Yet, Christian Lyon made it four from Colorado in the top eight with a fifth-place finish.
Heide Baron also improved in finals with a third-place finish in the 400 at 55.63, but that came partly at the expense of Julia Hall, who went to sixth in finals.
Katie Rainsberger's third in the 800 may rank as the stunner of the day. Rainsberger ran 2:13.92, but it wasn't enough to hold off Canadian Ginelle DeMone. Hannah Freeman added a Colorado fifth in the same event.
Lauren Offerman matched her fifth-place finish in the 1600 prelims with a fifth place in finals, but had to run eight seconds faster to do it--finishing at 5:03.40.
Isaiah Lapioli's fourth-place finish in the 400 came a bit out of the expected given that he was several places farther back in prelims.
The field events didn't exactly show the kind up bouncing ball effect as the track events, but that's because prelims for field events simply made getting a mark at or above the cut point.
Still, when the results settled into places for the Colorado field eventers, some exceeded expectations and others not.
Chloe Woest was solid in the pole vault with a second place at 11-6. Brenton Emmons won the boys pole vault, taking a PR vault of 15-3 to get there.
Maya Evans never got to 19 feet in the long jump and ended up fourth in an extremely competitive field. Logan Stewart's 21-8 earned a fifth in the long jump, but Lanier never got a legal jump in finals.
The Fort Collins Track Club hopes of winning the 4x200 picked up a splinter and the team ended up fifth with a still-very-respectable indoor time of 1:42.00.
Colorado did, however, enjoy a lot of success at the 4x400 and 4x800 distances. The Arapahoe girls and the Mountain View boys earned a second and a third, respectively, in the 4x800. Ric Rojas and Mountain View left the track with 4x800 seconds.
If you ponder a little while on the relay times, you have to be impressed.
Meet Results, Photos, and Video
