Final Results (PDF)
Official Great Midwest Indoor T&F Championships Page
INDIANAPOLIS – Trailing by two points with just two events left to score, Findlay saved some its best for last to stand at the awards podium victorious for the Great Midwest Athletic Conference Men’s Indoor Track & Field Championships trophy on Saturday.
With the shot put and 4x4 relay left to add into the scoring system, Hillsdale held a 124-122 lead in the team standings down the stretch. But the Oilers, led by a 1-2 finish in shot put for 18 points from auto qualifier Austin Combs and freshman Dequan Lovell, made the deficit too much for the host Chargers to overcome.
UF then put the icing on the cake with a conference meet record with an impressive 4x4 relay display, featuring the Oilers’ top speedsters in the final event.
On Saturday alone, a total of nine conference championship meet records were officially broken. Four records all-time were shattered throughout the two-day event at the Biermann Athletic Center and a total of 13 (of 17 events scored) new meet records were established.
Combs, just a junior, swept the throws in the cage with auto-qualifying distances recorded in both the weight throw and shot put.
Another key contributor to UF’s point total was senior all-around standout Trey Everett, who was named the Great Midwest Men’s Field Athlete of the Meet after a vote by the league’s head coaches.
Everett won the high jump and long jump with overall and conference meet records while finishing third in the triple jump. The auto-qualifying heptathlete also placed fifth in the 60-meter hurdles and fifth in pole vault. He accounted for 34 of Findlay’s 154 points.
Also part of three new conference meet records was UF’s George Effah, who won the 200 and 400-meter races and led off the winning 4x4 relay unit.
Hillsdale’s Great Midwest Men’s Track Athlete of the Meet Joseph Humes, just a sophomore, put on a clinic in his home surface with wins in the mile, 3K and running the anchor leg in the Chargers’ top distance medley relay grouping.
Setting brand new overall conference records was junior Ashton Dulin from 2017 men’s team champ Malone and Alderson Broaddus’ Todd Sekowski.
Dulin cracked the coveted eight-second barrier in the 60-meter hurdles final at 7.99 seconds. Dulin, the 2017 Great Midwest Indoor and Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year, also won the 200, was second in the long jump and third in the 60-meter dash finals.
Also notable from Malone was the presentation of Great Midwest Men’s Freshman Athlete of the Meet honors for Noah Chaplik, a burgeoning distance runner who gave a glimpse of his bright future. The rookie finished third in the 800, second in the mile and ran the third leg of the 4x4 relay.
The Pioneers would finish third in the team standings with 122 points followed by Walsh (110) and Alderson Broaddus (45) for the top five programs.
Sekowski ran a 6.86 time in the third heat of the prelims, but bettered that by one-hundredth of a second as he crossed the line with a decisive lunge for a 6.85 Great Midwest record. He supplanted former Kentucky Wesleyan standout James Glenn (6.88).
The official performance-based all-conference team will be released early next week. Coach of the year balloting will not be conducted until the conclusion of the NCAA DII Championships.