February 25, 2006

STORM LAKE , IOWA . . . Wartburg College won both the men’s and women’s Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) indoor track and field Championships hosted by Buena Vista University on Friday and Saturday (February 24-25). It is the fourth time in as many years of the Championship that the Knights have swept the team titles.

The Wartburg women scored an IIAC Indoor Championship meet record 241 points, defeating runner-up Loras College (114 points) by 127 points, the largest margin of victory in the four-year history of the Indoor Championship. The previous Conference Championship high point total was 219 points set by Wartburg in 2004. Central College finished third with 88.5 points followed by Luther College (86.5) and Simpson College (55.0).

The Wartburg men scored 193 points, defeating runner-up Loras (150 points) by 43 points. Central finished third with 136 points followed by Luther (78) and the University of Dubuque (56).

Loras junior Dana Klemm (Gurnee, Ill./Warren) and Wartburg senior Josh Hauser (Union, Iowa/BCLUW) were named the women’s and men’s Most Valuable Performer. Klemm won, and set Conference Championship records in both the shot put (14.19 meters) and weight throw (16.16 meters). She automatically qualified for the NCAA Championships in the shot put and bettered her NCAA provisional mark in the weight throw. She is the first field performer to earn indoor track MVP honors.

Hauser, who was also named 2005 indoor and outdoor Most Valuable Performer, won two events and provisionally qualified for the NCAA Championships in another. He placed first in the 200 and 400-meter dashes (22.36 seconds and 49.66 seconds) and used a third-place finish in the long jump, with a mark of 6.98 meters, to provisionally qualify for nationals. He was also a member of the third-place finishing 4x200 relay team (1:29.75).

In addition to Klemm’s two Championship records, seven other Championship records were broken (three men, four women) and two were tied at the 2006 Meet. Men’s records set include: 55-meter dash (Dubuque’s Jeanriles Metezier, 6.44 in preliminaries), 800-meter run (Luther’s Erik Bies, 1:55.46) and pole vault (Loras’ Kyle Calvert, 4.68 meters).

Women’s records set include: 800-meter run (Wartburg’s Heidi Porter, 2:14.16), 1000-meter run (Central’s MacKenzie Lauman, 3:00.63), 4x200 relay (Wartburg, 1:43.95) and pole vault (Loras’ Whitney Calvert and Cornell’s Heather Axen, 3.40 meters).

The men's long jump (Loras’ Victor Jones, 7.15 meters) and the women’s high jump (Central’s Katie Pederson, 1.63 meters) records were tied.

Wartburg’s Marcus Newsom was named Conference men’s and women’s Coach of the Year. It is his fourth straight women’s coach of the year honor and the second time he’s been named men’s coach of the year (also in 2003).

Complete Championship results are here. The top-three finishers in each event and members of the top-three relay teams earn All-Conference recognition.

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