BY MADISON SHAPLAND
The Fort Hays State University track team will suit up 48 athletes to compete at the 2023 MIAA Indoor Championships in Pittsburg, KS this weekend. Last year both the mens and womens teams placed 5th at the indoor conference championships, marking the highest finishing mark for both since 2007 when they joined the MIAA. The Tiger Track team is looking to elevate their performances at the Conference meet this weekend.
Coming in ranking fourth, the men have dominating entries in multiple events. Senior Ryan Stanley and sophomore Jacob Clark are sitting in a tie for first in the pole vault, followed by fellow freshmen teammates Jonah Remsberg and Brady Deges in 14th and 15th.
The 800m run is another event the Tigers are predicted to excel in with junior’s Aaron Mangan sitting third, Ethan Lang ranking fourth, and Trever Medina expecting to finish fifth. Sophomore Nolan Churchman and freshmen Luke Hampl, Jonah Remsberg, and Ethan Salmans are ranked third, eighth, ninth and 12th, respectively, in the MIAA Conference Heptathlon. Both the men’s 4×4 and Distance Medley relays are projected to place in the top three.
Other notable MIAA current rankings are sophomore Hayden Albright with seventh place projections in both the 60m dash and the 400m run and Sophomore Grant Bradely sitting in eighth for the mile and sixth for the 3000m run. In the 600y run, Lang ranks fifth followed by sophomore Kaden Wren with a ninth place ranking. Lang is also currently 10th in the mile. Senior Phillip Landrum is positioned eighth in the 200m dash and Junior Xavier Robinson is positioned fifth in the triple jump for the Tigers.
The Tiger women enter the meet ranked fifth and hold strong entries in the pentathlon with Senior Mattie Rossi projected for fourth, Junior Taylor Savolt for sixth, and sophomore Chloe Stanley for ninth. In the 600y run, Rossi is positioned in third followed by freshman teammate Reba Mader in seventh. Sophomore’s Regan Hodsden and Jaycee Vath are ranked third and ninth in the 5000m run. Both the women’s 4×4 and Distance medley relays are projected to finish top five at the meet.
Other notable MIAA rankings for the women are Senior’s Emily Salmans in seventh for the 800m run and Lyric Holman in sixth and eigthh for the 60m and 200m dashes. In the 3000m run Hodsden is sitting third. Savolt is ranked sixth in the triple jump and Rossi is ranked eighth in both the 60m hudles and long jump.
The Fort Hays men’s track and field team also rank nationally in the 10th spot for DII. Combining both the mens and womens squads, the Tigers have hit 32 national qualifying marks this season and broken a total of nine school records. The team has 11 athletes who have indoor All-MIAA status behind their names, four of those coming in from last year’s conference meet.
These include Holman (five honors), the two time defending 60m dash champion, Savolt (two honors), Salmans (two honors), and Rossi (one honor) for the women and Lang (four honors), who has back-to-back championships in the 600y run, Landrum (four honors), Stanley (two honors) who is the defending champion in pole vault, Mangan (two honors), Churchman (one honor), Albright (one honor), and Robinson (one honor).
The meet commences with the combined events at 2:00 p.m. today. Saturday marks the start of the men’s heptathlon in the morning, followed by field events and preliminaries in the afternoon. On Sunday, the meet will continue by finishing up the field events and the finals of track events at 1:30 p.m.
The meet schedule can be found here. To watch the 2023 MIAA Indoor Track and Field Championships live, visit TheMIAANetwork.com which offers different camera watching opportunities so fans can stream the events they want to watch.