Individual win by Watts highlights indoor track and field championships
One year ago, senior Dylan Watts missed the indoor track and field season due to a scheduled surgery on his shoulder. Last Saturday, however, Watts won gold in the Big Sky Conference Championships in Flagstaff, Arizona.
File photo | Argonaut
Senior Dylan Watts clears the pole during the 2012 track and field season. Watts won the pole vault event at the Big Sky Indoor Track and Field Championship despite missing most of last year with a shoulder injury.
He finished the event with a height of 16 feet, 11.5 inches. Watts’ mark was a career-best and four inches better than the next competitor.
“Dylan did a fantastic job,” Idaho coach Tim Cawley said. “He stayed composed. The conference kids he was going against did a fantastic job too — I think the top three or four guys in the competition all (got personal records) including Dylan. Dylan had to have his best day to win it.”
Watts was the only Vandal to win an event out at the Big Sky Championships out of the small pool of Vandals who competed. He was also the only senior on the team without any outdoor track and field eligibility remaining.
The Idaho men’s team finished the championship meet in 11th place with 14 points, while the women’s team finished in 12th with 19 points. Northern Arizona won with 144 points on the men’s side and Sacramento State won by less than two points on the women’s side with 99.83 points.
Idaho’s top performer on the women’s side was junior Katelyn Peterson. The two-sport athlete finished second in the high jump with a mark of 5-6.5, which was also a career-best for her.
“Katelyn is the full package — a two-sport athlete, a tremendous student, just went out and competed, battled. She forced a girl to PR and the girl had to kind of have her best day to beat Katelyn. I think Katelyn pushed her to that level.”
Other Vandals who earned points included sophomores Adara Winder and Ana Pardo Cofrades in the women’s shot put and sophomore Dusan Jevtic in the men’s high jump.
“They competed really well,” Cawley said. “I think the majority of the athletes placed as high or higher than they what they came in ranked at. You can’t really ask for much more than that.”
The Vandals competed in the meet without Emmanuel Panchol. The senior high jumper from Khartoum, Sudan, was the favorite in the triple jump and a top-five seed in the high jump, but Cawley said he held him out of the meet on a coaching decision for reasons with the team.
With the indoor season concluded, the Vandals have a quick turnaround for the outdoor track and field season. Cawley said the team was already back practicing again Monday. The first outdoor meet will be the Vandal Jamboree March 28 at the Dan O’Brien Track and Field Complex.
“We’ll raise the volume back up a little bit and get back to teaching some things and work our way down to the season and compete for outdoors,” Cawley said. “It’s pretty much that simple.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]