NORMAN, Okla.—Nebraska’s women started out strong in their final appearance at the Big 12 track meet, sweeping the podium in the hammer throw Friday to claim an early lead over four-time defending champion Texas A&M.
Victoria Zimmerman, Jade Siegel and Samantha Musil were the only three competitors to surpass 190 feet in the hammer, claiming the top three spots and a 24-point haul for the Cornhuskers. Zimmerman won with a personal-best 197 foot, 9 inch throw on her second attempt.
Nebraska leads with 29 points, Texas A&M has 22, Iowa State 21 and Oklahoma 20 with two days left in the three-day meet.
“We want to say goodbye. We want to do it definitely with good sportsmanship and we want to encourage the other teams to keep doing as well as they have been,” Zimmerman said.
“We’re definitely honored to be part of the Big 12, and we’re very excited to be moving on to the Big Ten.”
The Cornhuskers were a surprise winner at the Big 12 indoor meet in February at their home track, snapping Texas A&M’s run of four straight championships.
“Hopefully, we’ll pull something off. We weren’t expected to win indoors,” Zimmerman said. “It just depends on how things go.”
K.P. Singh won his second straight conference title in the hammer throw to help the Sooners get ahead on the men’s side with 29 first-day points. His throw of 211 feet, 6 inches was more than 14 feet longer than second-place Josh Koglin of Iowa State.
“Today was all about winning,” Singh said. “Just to finish strong and just about finishing first today.”
Colorado’s Joe Bosshard set a Big 12 meet record by finishing the 10,000 meters in 28:52.85, his personal best time. The top five finishers were ahead of the previous record of 29:23.67 by Kansas State’s Matthew Chesang in 2005, and Bosshard lapped all but the top seven.
He and Oklahoma’s Kevin Schwab set the pace early and ended up claiming the top spots.
“I looked back somewhere around seven or eight laps in and saw we had a gap on the rest of the field,” Bosshard said. “I didn’t want them to come back and I thought, ‘Well, let’s just make it a quick race.'”
The Buffaloes and Sooners swept the top eight, point-earning spots and Colorado—in its last Big 12 competition before joining the Pac-12 next season—ended the day in second place with 23 points. Texas A&M is third with 19 and two-time defending champion Nebraska is fourth with 11.
“We always want to perform well here,” Bosshard said. “This is a big meet for us and for it to be our last, it was important to me to go out well. I think it was important to coach (Mark) Wetmore and coach (Heather) Burroughs just to kind of put a stamp on what Colorado has done in the Big 12.”
The host Sooners got a big boost on the women’s side with an out-of-nowhere win by Jessica Engel in the 10,000 meters. She said she had “never run it before in my life”—usually running the 5,000 meters—then finished with the second-best time ever at the Big 12 meet.
“I was just going out to score some points for the team. We said if I was in it with like 500 (meters) to go that I should just try and go for it, so I did and it worked,” said Engel, who finished in 33:42.11. “I’m pretty surprised actually. I’m really excited.”
Oklahoma’s other 10 points came with another championship, by Brittany Borman in the javelin. She edged Texas A&M’s Bonnie Richardson by seven inches with a throw of 163 feet, 8 inches.
Sam Humphreys of A&M won the men’s javelin with a throw of 238 feet, 3 inches to beat Baylor’s Nick Lyons by more than 11 feet.
Missouri’s Lars Rise leads Nebraska’s Bjorn Barrefors by 42 points after the first of two days of competition in the men’s decathlon. Texas A&M’s Daphne Fitzpatrick holds a 37-point edge on Chantae McMillan of Nebraska in the women’s event.
