First season draws to close for Cawley and crew, championship meet nears
For Idaho pole vaulter Dylan Watts, the 2015 Big Sky Indoor Track and Field Championship is the last track and field meet of his collegiate career.
Watts heads into the championships ranked No. 1 in the conference in the pole vault with a height of 16 feet, 5.5 inches.
Watts and the Vandals will compete in the championship meet Thursday through Saturday in Flagstaff, Arizona. The meet is hosted by preseason favorites, Northern Arizona, who were picked in the preseason by the coaches to win the conference on both the men and women’s sides.
While first-year Idaho coach Tim Cawley said he is excited heading into the meet, he said his team is redshirting a lot of key athletes this season, so the Vandals aren’t at their full strength.
“I’m excited where we’re at, I think it’s good,” Cawley said. “We are redshirting a lot of kids. When you redshirt someone like a Matt Sullivan and a Ben Ayesu-Attah and Jesse (Villines), there’s a lot of talented kids. So it’s one of the things going into this, it’s not quite the team (it could be), but after this weekend seeing the kids we have in uniform competing … they’re working hard, they’re doing better every meet.”
Idaho is used to winning track and field championships in the WAC, but with the team being in a transition year and a tougher, deeper Big Sky Conference awaiting them, expectations aren’t as high heading into the championship meet. The Big Sky features 12 full teams while Idaho only had to face a handful of indoor track and field teams in the WAC.
“I’m excited to see kind of what they can do,” Cawley said. “But where we’re going to place, predictions, anything like that, I honestly have no idea. Every time I try to predict that in my career, I’ve been wrong every time.”
Even though Idaho is fielding a smaller team, the Vandals still have athletes in prime positions to take home individual medals. In addition to Watts, who is the only Vandal with no outdoor eligibility remaining, sophomore Dusan Jevtic, senior Emmanuel Panchol and senior Zach Trumbauer also rank in the top five in their respective events on the men’s side.
Panchol and Jevtic are tied for No. 5 in the high jump with 6-8.75 marks while Panchol also stands alone at No. 1 in the triple jump with a leap of 48-1.75. Trumbauer sits at No. 5 in the weight throw for the Vandals.
On the women’s side, Idaho is led by junior Katelyn Peterson’s No. 1 high jump ranking of 5-8. Peterson is also a star volleyball player for the Vandal volleyball team.
“She’s just a tremendous athlete,” Cawley said of Peterson. “She is extremely competitive, extremely driven, fantastic in the classroom, fantastic on the volleyball court and fantastic out on the track. She just wants to be great in everything she does. It’s a great quality for somebody to have.”
Idaho also has top five rankings from its distance medley relay team and sophomore shot putters Adara Winder and Ana Pardo heading into to the championship meet.
“I’m excited to go and experience the Big Sky,” Cawley said. “Never experienced that before. Every conference is different, so I’m excited to go see the energy, the intensity. It’s a great team, it’s a lot of fun to be around this crew. I’m really excited to see what we can do.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]