On Saturday, the Bears competed at the DePauw Invitational in Greencastle, IN. The women took first place and the men took second place in what turned out to be a competition more with themselves and less with other schools.
The one athlete who has consistently been winning is junior All-American Kammie Holt. In the long jump, Holt set a new Bears indoor record with a long jump of 5.75m (18’10.5″). Her jump automatically qualified her for the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships.
In addition, her jump eclipsed the meet record by 63 cm and extended her undefeated streak in the horizontal jumps in 2003. This impressive performance was on par with her triple jump performance at the Pepsi Classic last week where she jumped an astounding 11.95m (39’2.5″), 30 cm greater than the meet record of 11.65m and 15 cm greater than the automatic NCAA qualifying jump of 11.80m.
However, Kammie Holt’s individual performances, although impressive, may have been overshadowed by the performances of her teammates. In fact, the performances of her teammates were a contributing factor to her own success.
“My body felt great and ready to go today,” Holt said. “I didn’t have to worry about any injuries I’ve had to worry about in the past, so I think that helped a lot. And I also think that the performances of the other jumpers helped a great deal as well-I mean, there were [personal records] all over the place, so they kind of got the ball rolling.”
Those jumpers were junior Lindsey Clark-Ryan, senior Adrianna Leigh, freshman Leah Sabin, and freshman Julie McDermitt. In the long jump, Clark-Ryan took third with a personal-best leap of 5.30m (17’04.75″), followed by Leigh who took fifth with a personal-best jump of 5.13m (16’10”). Sabin and McDermitt took sixth and seventh in the long jump with jumps of 5.01 m (16’05.25″) and 4.97 m (16’03.75″) respectively.
In the triple jump, Clark-Ryan won with a personal best leap of 11.32m (37’01.75″) followed by Sabin who had a personal best jump of 11.01 m (36′.01.5″). With this jump, Clark-Ryan improved her NCAA provisional qualifying mark by .06m, and she broke the previous record meet by .69m.
Leigh, who jumped for the first time this season following a stress fracture, epitomized the emotions of all the female jumpers when she said, “It was cool that we had six jumpers out there, and we were all feeding off of each other.”
In addition to the excellent performances by the women jumpers, the men’s throwers also had a very impressive day. In fact, they broke six personal records between the four of them. In the shot put, sophomore Eric Frye took sixth with a personal-best throw of 13.28m (43’06.75″), and sophomores Mike George and Kyle Wagner set personal records of 12.98m (42’07”) and 12.76m (41’10.25″) respectively. Finally, Senior Alex Konkel set a personal record in the shot put with a throw of 12.42m (40’09”). In the 35-lb weight throw both Konkel and Wagner had personal record tosses of 13.50m (44’03.5″) and 11.32m (38’01.75″).
“It was a rush to watch these guys throw personal records over and over and over,” Bears head coach Steve Rubin said. “They developed this moment within their group, and it got to the point where every time one of them stepped into the circle, you knew you were about to see another great performance.”