WOOSTER, Ohio – The Wittenberg Tigers put the finishing touches on the 2013 indoor track and field season with some outstanding individual performances at the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) championship meet hosted by the College of Wooster.
As a team, the Tiger men placed fifth in the nine-team field with 50 points, a tantalizing eight points out of the third-place position held by Allegheny. Wittenberg was hampered by an injury to junior Victor Banjo (Sugarland, Texas/Stephen F. Austin), who scored 16 points by himself in the 2012 meet. He did not compete in the 2013 meet.
On the women's side, the Tigers finished eighth with 40 points, five points behind Kenyon and nine behind Allegheny for sixth.
Individually, the highlights were provided by the men's 4x400-meter relay and sophomore Shelby Kaho (Sugar Grove, Ohio/Berne Union), who broke her own school record in the 60-meter hurdles. Kaho posted a time of 9.22 seconds en route to a win in the event in 2012, and she came back strong in her second collegiate campaign to lower that time to 9.19 to just barely touch out Sara Johnson of Ohio Wesleyan, who hit the finish line in 9.21.
Wittenberg's other first-place finish was turned in by the 4x400-meter relay quartet of junior Chris Frierson (Cedar Hill, Texas/DeSoto), freshman Laike Wallace (Washington Court House, Ohio/Washington Court House), freshman Asanka Ekanayake (Clarksburg, Mo./Clarksburg) and sophomore Justin Yates (Dayton, Ohio/Bellbrook). They broke the school and conference record with a blistering time of 3:21.41, a mere .04 ahead of Wabash.
For Yates, the victory was a big turnaround from the disappointment of the previous day. One of the favorites in the 400-meter dash, Yates was disqualified from his preliminary race due to a false start. Frierson also enjoyed vindication of sorts after he dropped from fifth in the prelims to eighth in the finals of the 200-meter dash.
Other strong performances by Wittenberg men included sophomore Adam Kapuscinski (Cincinnati, Ohio/Sycamore) with a fourth-place finish in the 800-meter run, freshman Aaron Melsop (Westerville, Ohio/DeSales) in fifth place in the long jump, freshman Justin Fisher (Fort Wayne, Ind./Carroll) in sixth place in the long jump and third place in the triple jump, and senior Raphael Allen (Springfield, Ohio/Yellow Springs) in fifth place in the triple jump and third place in the long jump. A top-three finish is good for All-NCAC honors.
Rounding things out for the Tiger men, the distance medley relay quartet of junior Jacob Kuntz (Versailles, Ky./Woodford County), Wallace, sophomore Austin Butler (Carroll, Ohio/Bloom Carroll) and sophomore Wade Westbrook (Columbus, Ohio/Whetstone) placed fourth and the 4x200-meter relay claimed third place, which earned Yates, Frierson, Ekanayake and Fisher all-conference honors.
For the women, freshman Brea Medlock (Galena, Ohio/Big Walnut) turned in fourth-place finishes in the 200- and 400-meter dash events and senior Kaileigh Bible (Bellefontaine, Ohio/Bellefontaine) added fifth place points in the pole vault. In addition, the 4x200-meter relay of senior Shawna Johnson (Uhrichsville, Ohio/Claymont), freshman Jordan Crow (North Las Vegas, Nev./Palo Verde), junior Cara Vendeville (Perry, Ohio/Perry) and Medlock placed fifth, as did the 4x400-meter relay of Johnson, Crow, freshman Becah Delp (York, Pa./Eastern York) and Medlock.