2022-23 Shocker Women XC and Track & Field

[1972Shocker]

One good thing about distance running is you they are generally easier to compare high school marks vs college marks.

Finja personal bests compared to Wichita State's all-time Top 10 marks are as follows:

Outdoor 800m: 2:15.99 vs WSU Top 10 marks ranging from 2:06.12 to 2:12.32
Outdoor 1500m: 4:39.13 vs WST Top 10 marks of 4:16.72 to 4:30.04
Outdoor 3000: No comparison available

Indoor 800m: 2:16.50 vs WSU Top 10 marks of 2:06.77 to 2:13.88
Indoor 1500m: No comparison but Finja's 1500m time converts to about a 5:03.5 mile vs WSU Top 10 indoor mile marks of 4:34.41 to 4:53.44.

However, her outdoor 800m times would not make the top 20 rankings among high school girls which range from 2:00.78 to 2:08.30

Considering distance runners definitely improve with age (usually peaking in the early 30's) Finja's times look okay. I lot will depend on how much she improves at WSU. I was impressed that her PB in the indoor 800 was only a half second slower than her outdoor 800 PB considering in the indoor you run 8 curves and in the outdoor you only run 4 curves.

I would think she would improve enough to break into a couple of Top 10 lists at WSU.

[1972Shocker]

The Shockers are holding their traditional Black and Yellow Intra-Squad meet at the Heskett Center this week to kick off the Indoor Track & Field season. I think this is mostly a knock off the rust, have something different than just training, and get a feel for what the Coach's have to work with and need to work on meet. There will be few non-WSU athletes competing but it is primarily an intra-squad event.

The women's pentathlon (60H, HJ, SP, LJ, 800m) will start at Noon on Friday.

The individual Field Events start at 11:00 am on Friday and the individual Running Events start at 2:00 capped of with the final event of the meet, the Tug-of-War

https://goshockers.com/documents/202...d_MeetInfo.pdf

Of greatest interest to me is that Destiny Masters is schedule to compete. I had high hopes for Destiny last year but injuries pretty much derailed her both at the end of the indoor season and for all of the outdoor season. Destiny Masters holds the top mark coming in and looks to repeat as the Shocker Multi champion. Last year at this meet, Masters recorded the best marks in four of the five events and scored 1,003 points in the high jump with a personal-best clearance of 1.82m/5'11.5" putting up her PR of 3,877 for the pentathlon. That high jump ranked her 18^th in the nation at the conclusion of the indoor season.

From Coach Rainbolt:

"Last year, Destiny Masters had a really nice pentathlon, so she's been looking forward to this, especially because she had some injury problems last spring. She's feeling good now physically, and I'm real hopeful that she's ready for a nice meet. If she can put together a nice meet, the possibility exists that she scores high enough to challenge for a spot at the NCAA Indoor Championships.".


Correction Per goshox74 - This week is only the multi-events. The individual events will be next Friday.

[1972Shocker]

Destiny Masters won the pentathlon at the Shocker Multi on Friday with score of 3,795 points as she off to a hot start with a personal-best performance in the 60-meter hurdles, running 8.53 to move up to No. 6 on the Wichita State all-time list and earn 1,010 points in the event to take a lead she never lost. Moving on to the high jump, Masters entered the competition after the rest of the field had already completed their efforts, clearing her opening bar of 1.67m/5'7.5" before passing to her final height of 1.73m/5'8", three inches below her personal record.

She went on to record the best long jump of the day (5.65m/18'6.5") after throwing the second-farthest shot put (10.52m/34'6.25") and finished with a 2:38.85 in the 800 meters, less than two seconds off her career best to secure to the Shocker Multi pentathlon win.

Destiny/s total was 82 points off of her PR of 3,877 points set in last year's PR but is a good start coming back from an injury plagued year last year. Hopefully, she is on her way to healthy season this year. If so she should be in the hunt for for an AAC pentathlon championship. Everyone esle was 500+ points off the winning score set by Destiny.

[1972Shocker]

The Shockers competed in the annual early indoor season KU-KSU-WSU Triangular. Each team is allowed a 26-athlete men's and 26-athlete women's competition roster, and only the top two athletes from each program can score in each event using the 7-5-4-3-2-1 scoring system. WSU is the host this year but the meets is being held at Washburn's excellent indoor facility. (And, yes, it is far nicer than the Heskett Center indoor facility).

The men and women each compete over 15 events and close out with a mixed 4x400 relay.

The final combined men's and women's scoring totals were KU 268 - KSU 204 - WSU 198. I am not sure what the separate scoring breakdown for just the women's team was.

Top performances for the women included:

Destiny Masters finished 2nd in the high jump at 5-8.75 at which point she retired. She competed in a couple of other events so hopefully that wasn't due to an injury (which plagued her last year). Destiny was 6th in the long jump at 18-00.50 and she finished 2nd in the 60m hurdles at 8.58. Those marks would score 916, 700 and 1,000 points in a pentathlon.

Mattelyn Swartz, a freshman from Anthony, opened her Shocker career with a 5-7 high jump

Sophomore Chidera Okoro won the high jump with a PB of 18-9.75. Junior Zarrey Sams was closed behind at 18-8.75. Chidera also finished 2nd in the triple jump with hop-skip-and-jump of 39-10.75 which was also a PB.

Sophomore Farrah Miller, a juco transfer, won the 600 yard run with a time of 1:24.84. I don't think this is a real common event but is occasionally run at indoor meets. But that time is the 2nd fastest ever in Shocker history.

Sprinter Faith Turner got her sophomore year off to a good start finishing 2nd in the 60m dash at 7.47 just .03 off of her PB.

[WuDrWu]

That HAS to be a High Jump school record.

[1972Shocker]

That HAS to be a High Jump school record.

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

[1972Shocker]

Most of the the Shockers will be in Colorado Springs today, tomorrow and Saturday to compete at the Air Force Academy at the Ralph Lindeman Invitational.

Today belongs to the multi-event athletes. The Shocks have sent 4 athletes to compete in the pentathlon in a 6-athlete field. Colorado and Cal Poly each have 1 athlete entered.

The Shockers competing are So. Destiny Masters, Fr. Abby Klipstein, Fr. Tess Roman, and Fr. Sadie Millard.

Pentathlon events include the 60m hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump and 800 meters..

Individual track and field events start up at Noon tomorrow.

Distance coach Kirk Hunter is taking five men and five women to compete at Iowa State in the Cyclone Open on Saturday.

[1972Shocker]

Destiny Masters won the pentathlon but only scored 3,496 points. She actually was on pace to be close to her PB of 3,877 points but she struggle mightily in the closing 800m race. You would expect Destiny to run in the 2:35 neighborhood but she finished last with slow time of 3:11 that was worth only 269 points. I don't know if she was out of gas, possibly nursing an injury or just not wanting to push too hard this early in the season. I'm beginning to wonder if Destiny may not be a little too fragile for the pentathlon and heptathlon. I guess we will see how it goes, but if that is the case perhaps she and the team would be better off if she focused on her 2 or 3 strongest events.

Freshman Tess Roman finished 2nd with 3,431 points.

Neither of those point totals would be good enough to score points in the AAC Indoor Championships.

[1972Shocker]

I am thinking Destiny's pedestrian showing in the pentathlon 800m run was probably attributable to the altitude at the Air Force Academy and the fact she is scheduled to compete in the individual 60m hurdles, long jump and high jump today and tomorrow.

In fact, Destiny won her heat in today's 60m hurdle qualifying with a new PB of 8.49 that puts her at #5 on the Shocker All-Time list.

Destiny finished 5th at 8.57 in the 60m hurdle finals and Jr. Zarrey Sams finished 8th at 9.22. Both times slower than their qualifying times yesterday.

Destiny and Jr. Marissa Jensen both cleared 5-9.25 in the high jump to place 1st and 2nd. Both had 3 misses but Destiny had no misses at the winning height and Marissa had 2 before clearing on her final attempt with Destiny be awarded 1st place. Good solid jumps from both. Marissa jumping much better this year than last. Fr. Mattelyn Swartz cleared 5-7 for the second consecutive meet to finish 5th, a pretty solid jump for a freshman. 5-9.25 was the winning height in last year's AAC Championship and 5-7 would have finished 5th.

So. Chidera Okoro and her sister, Jr. Ezinne Okoro, finished 1st and in the triple jump with distances of 38-9.50 and 38.2. Will most likely need to be above 40 feet to score in the AAC Championships.

So. Faith Turner set a new PB in finishing 2nd in the 200m dash in a time of 24.57. Fellow So. Sydney Johnson was 5th in 24.67 which was also a new PB for her. Those times rank 7th and 9th best all-time at WSU. However, those time might, just might, get you 1 point for an 8th place finish in the speedy AAC (at least for one more season before UCF, Houston and Cincinnati move on to the Big 12).

[1972Shocker]

Meanwhile at the Cyclone Open at Iowa State......

Shocker Sr. Abebe Sullivan finished 5th in the 3,000m run with a time of 9:55.60. That is the fastest indoor 3k Abebe has run but it was on an unusually big 300m indoor oval. Jr. Lea Brueckner, a Munster, Germany import, finished 10:08.79 and So. Sarah Bertry was 14th at 10:11.36. All of those are career best times in the indoor 3k but probably won't count in the record books due to the 300m indoor oval.

Farrah Miller, after spending a year at Rider University and a year at Monroe Junior College, made her 800m debut with time of 2:15.72. That's an okay time but not great especially on the large Iowa State oval.

[goshox74]

I am thinking Destiny's pedestrian showing in the pentathlon 800m run was probably attributable to the altitude at the Air Force Academy and the fact she is scheduled to compete in the individual 60m hurdles, long jump and high jump today and tomorrow.

Once Destiny got done with the Pent LJ and it wasn't possible to qualify for nationals, she decided to take it easy and run just fast enough to win the event for the team score, and get ready for her open events.

[1972Shocker]

Shockers Set to Host Herm Wilson Invitational

Schedule: https://goshockers.com/documents/202...e_Schedule.pdf

The Wichita State track and field team will compete in its sole home indoor meet of the season Friday and Saturday at the Heskett Center. The Shockers are hosting 24 teams in the two-day competition. However, not exactly major league competition as the only D-1 athletes, other than Shockers, that are schedule to compete as far as I can tell are 3 Oklahoma State women in the pentathlon. Otherwise, it appears to be mostly Jucos and NAIA schools plus a few Oklahoma D-II schools.

"Every track meet is, plus or minus, a glorified practice session," head coach Steve Rainbolt said. "This is dress rehearsal for the championship meet, and ultimately we are learning things that are going to help us in championship competition."

That said there are some pretty good juco athletes competing and this venue perhaps provides some recruiting and scouting benefits for Coach Rainbolt and staff.

The highlight for Shocker fans may actually be a couple of former Shocker standouts, including on the women's side Rebekah Topham, who will be competing in and probably favored to win the milre run.

Other highlights for the Shocker women are:

Destiny Masters is set for her third pentathlon after backing off at the end of the competition in Colorado last week, jogging through the 800 meters in order to score points for her team and conserve energy to come back this week with the goal of putting up a point total that would have the potential to qualify to the NCAA Indoor Championships. "We're going to go for it again, and she's going to finish this time regardless of whether she's on pace to qualify or not," Rainbolt said. "I'm excited for her. I feel like she's in pretty darn good shape.

I think, although not 100% sure, that you need to post a point total that is in the top 16 in the country to qualify for the NCAA Championships in the pentathlon. Currently, Desitny sits at 17th with her 3,816 points she posted on December 1, 2022 at the Wichita State Multi event to open the season. I think she would feel pretty good if she could post something around her personal best of 3,877 she scored 2 years ago. That would move her up to around 12th in the country. Then she could back of a bit over the next month and focus on honing her event skills and her conditioning with a goal of peaking at AAC & NCAA Championship time. Although where she sits in the rankings can change from week-to-week.

Masters and Marissa Jensen also hope to build momentum in the high jump after both clearing 1.76m/5'9.25, a personal best for Jensen, to move up to second in the conference and 33^rd in the NCAA. Freshman Mattelyn Swartz is also on the rise with a 1.70m/5'7" clearance at Air Force, ranking seventh in the AAC and will join the other two in the Herm Wilson high jump competition.

Abeba Sullivan has the top seed time in the 3000m run but she sits 11th in the AAC with 7 runners from Tulsa and 3 from SMU ahead of her.

[1972Shocker]

Destiny is off to a good start in her quest to put up a strong, potentially NCAA Championship qualifying score in the pentathlon. She set a new PR in the 60m hurdles winning the event with a time of 8.47 seconds good for 1,024 points.

[WuDrWu]

That would be a PB for Destiny in the 60H with a scorching 8.47 yielding 1024 points.

[1972Shocker]

Destiny has that down, or should I say up and down:

I wonder if the guy who hopped over the railing as soon as the gun went off might be Destiny's dad. Maybe her mom shooting some video.