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Waskom’s Win Part Of Five Pac-12 Podiums For Dawgs

by gohuskies.com
May 11, 2024

2024 Pac-12 Championships
May 10-12 | Boulder, Colo. | Potts Field

Event Schedule | Live Results | Pac-12 Networks | Championships Homepage

BOULDER, Colo. – Joe Waskom got revenge on his shoe. A year after a fallen shoe derailed his race in the Pac-12 steeplechase, Waskom double-knotted his laces and rolled to the conference title on the second of the three-day Pac-12 Track & Field Championships. Waskom and Sam Affolder went 1-2 for the Dawgs in the steeple as the UW men's team continued its push to defend its team title at Colorado's Potts Field.
 
Along with Waskom and Affolder, the Huskies got podium finishes from Man Manson (runner-up in the pole vault), Simon Park (third-place in the pole vault), and Jami Schlueter (runner-up in the decathlon). With 8 of the 21 events concluded, the men are up to 82 points and remain in the lead of the team race, with California close behind with 67 points and USC third with 29.
 
The Husky women's team put three more women into the 800-meters final on Sunday, giving them seven scoring chances in the mid-distance finals tomorrow, and Kaia Tupu-South provided points in the shot put with a fourth-place finish. The women are currently ninth with 13 points, but also have major scoring opportunities tomorrow in the pole vault, discus, and triple jump.
 
Sunday's finale of the Pac-12 Track & Field Championships will be televised live on the Pac-12 Networks starting at 12 noon, with every race on the track being a championship final.

 
Distances
 
Waskom's victory in the steeplechase was the third in a row for UW in the event, following Brian Fay in 2022 and Ed Trippas in 2023. It also broke a mini curse for Waskom in the event, as in addition to the lost shoe from a year ago, in 2021 he was fighting for the win but misread where the finish line was, and had to settle for silver in the race that saw his steeplechase PR of 8:35.71.
 
It was the second individual Pac-12 title for Waskom, who last won the 1,500-meters in 2022, and he'll be back in the 1,500-meter final on Sunday as well.
 
Waskom and Affolder had to gauge an early move from Colorado's Kole Mathison, who ran out on his own to an early lead that reached 25-30 meters. It wasn't until late in the race that Mathison started to get pulled back in. Heading into the final lap, it was Affolder who moved first, catching Mathison and taking the lead into the backstretch. But Waskom had waited things out perfectly and he hit the gas with around 200-meters to go, passing Mathison and his teammate, and pulling away down the homestretch, pumping his first and holding up the W on his jersey as he won in a time of 9:03.66.
 
Affolder powered to runner-up in 9:06.13. The fifth-year senior's previous best Pac-12 finish was seventh back in 2022.
 
The other big track races today for the distance crew were the 800-meter prelims.
 
In the women's 800m prelims, three out of the four women who broke the NCAA 4x800m Record two weeks ago at the Penn Relays were running without a baton in hand, and all three reached the eight-woman final. The only relay member not in the event was Chloe Foerster, who qualified yesterday for the 1,500-meter final.
 
Marlena Preigh ran an outdoor personal-best of 2:05.04 in the second heat and would advance on time. In heat three, Samantha Friborg cruised to a victory in 2:04.59. In the fourth and final heat, indoor All-American Wilma Nielsen won it with a time of 2:06.27.

 
On the men's side, four Huskies who raced the 1,500m prelims on Friday doubled back for the 800m today, and two were able to advance and give themselves a chance at the double on Sunday.
 
Nathan Green ran the second-fastest time of the prelims, going 1:47.84, which is a new outdoor PR for the indoor school record-holder and puts him No. 5 outdoors in school history. Luke Houser grabbed the eighth and final qualifying spot with a time of 1:49.75, the first 800-meters he's ever run in college.
 
Ronan McMahon-Staggs was 12th overall in 1:51.30. He'll be in the 1,500m final tomorrow. Freshman Thom Diamond was 23rd in 1:54.24.
 
Throws
 
Sophomore Kaia Tupu-South showed she's moving back towards her record-setting form today as she had her best two throws of this outdoor season to earn a fourth-place finish in a stellar women's shot put field.
 
Tupu-South opened well with a 53-3 ½ toss, then she got a season's-best of 54-10 ¼ in round three. Her sixth-round throw went 54-7 ¼. Tupu-South was just four centimeters out of third-place but it's her second top-four finish at Pac-12s. She'll spin the discus on Sunday.
 
Senior Jayden White has been a model of consistency for the Dawgs at both the conference and national levels over his career. But White, who has gone fourth, second, fourth in three previous Pac-12 hammers, came into this loaded hammer field ranked just seventh with a 220-foot season best.
 
White got a 210-foot throw in round two to get into the final rounds in eighth-place. He improved to 213-feet in round four but did not move up the board. In the fifth of six rounds, White put things together and heaved the hammer 225-4, pumping his fist as he walked out of the ring after the new season-best. That moved him up to fifth-place, which is where he would end up, to score four points for the team.

 
Jumps
 
The men's pole vault saw two Dawgs come in expected to produce points for the team, and Max Manson and Simon Park came through in a big way. When the two each cleared 16-10 ¼, which was Manson's opening bar and the second for Park, it was already down to four remaining vaulters.
 
Both Dawgs then cleared 17-2 ¼ on first attempts and it was down to them along with Cal's Skyler Magula, who came in as the top seed. Magula had a second-attempt clearance of 17-6 ¼, and Manson cleared that on his third attempt, with Park going out at that height. Needing the next bar to take the lead away from Magula based on the tiebreak, Manson was unable to make 17-10 ¼ today, but he and Park finished 2-3 to post a big 14 points for the team score. It's the second-straight silver for a Husky in the men's vault, as Jacob Englar took second last year.

 
Sprints
 
Freshman Jonathan Frazier, who won his 400m hurdles qualifying heat on Friday to reach the final, added another finals spot to his plans, as he grabbed the last finals spot today in the 110m hurdles. Frazier ran a season-best 14.57 seconds to get another chance to score points tomorrow.
 
Multis
 
Jami Schlueter entered the second day of the decathlon in the lead, and built on that lead with a big season's-best run in the opening 110m hurdles. Schlueter ran 14.39 seconds to win that event and tack on another 925 points. He then was second overall in the discus with a mark of 135-1 that was just six inches off his PR. But Schlueter ran into trouble for the first time in the pole vault, the eighth event, as he only cleared one bar at 13-5. That dropped him into second-place for the first time in the competition.
 
But Schlueter would rebound in a big way, getting a huge PR in the javelin to stay in the hunt. He threw 185-3 on his first attempt, nearly 14-feet better than his old PR of 171-11. Trailing Oregon's Rafael Raap by 73 points going into the final 1,500-meters, Schlueter would need to beat Raap by around a dozen seconds to make up the gap. He gave it his all, finishing second in the final run in 4:47.39, but Raap hung on three seconds behind Schlueter to get the overall win.
 
Schlueter had the second-best score of his career over the past two days, scoring 7,664 points. Raap edged him out for the win with 7,719 points. Third-place was more than 500 points behind Schlueter, who now has a bronze and a silver at Pac-12s.
 

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