February 24, 2007

MOUNT VERNON, IOWA . . . The Loras College men and Wartburg College women won the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) indoor track and field Championships hosted by Cornell College on Friday and Saturday. The Duhawks won their second IIAC men’s title, having shared the 2005 title, while the Knights have won women’s indoor track titles all five years the Conference has sponsored the Championship.

Loras totaled 178.5 points, four points better than runner-up Wartburg. The 178.5 points is the second lowest point total for a Conference Champion, and the margin of victory marks the closest finish in five years outside of the 2005 tie.

The Wartburg women amassed 262 points, the highest point total in the five-year history of the Championship. They defeated runner-up Loras by 99 points, the second-largest margin of victory. The previous high point total was 241 points last year when Wartburg won by a Conference-record 127 points.

Final Team Standings

	Women				Men
1st	Wartburg	262.0		1st	Loras	178.5
2nd	Loras	163.0		2nd	Wartburg	174.5
3rd	Central	81.0		3rd	Central	90.0
4th	Luther	68.5		4th	Coe	82.5
5th	Simpson	58.0		5th	Luther	59.0
6th	Buena Vista	50.5		6th	Buena Vista	52.5
7th	Cornell	27.5		7th	Dubuque	48.0
8th	Dubuque	20.5		t-8th	Simpson	28.0
9th	Coe	7.0		t-8th	Cornell	28.0

Most Valuable Performers: Loras seniors Geoff Kaiser and Dana Klemm were named Conference Most Valuable Performers. Kaiser scored 37 points for the Duhawks with two individual titles and six top-seven finishes. He won the long jump (7.10 meters) and triple jump (14.16 meters), recording NCAA provisional qualifying marks in both events. He also placed third in the 600-meter run (1:23.90) and seventh in the 55-meter hurdles (7.97 seconds). Kaiser was a member of the fourth-place finishing 4x200 relay team (1:31.78) and the fifth-place finishing 4x400 relay team (3:26.8).

Klemm, who was also the IIAC indoor MVP last year, won both the shot put and the weight throw. She set a Conference record and surpassed the NCAA automatic qualifying standard in the weight throw with a mark of 17.28 meters. Her shot put mark was 13.81 meters.

Kaiser is the third Loras student-athlete to receive IIAC indoor track and field MVP honors, joining Marcus Murphy (2003) and Dan Winder (2004).

Klemm is the second two-time women’s indoor track and field MVP and is one of two Loras women to receive the award. Wartburg’s Missy Buttry was named IIAC MVP in 2003 and 2005. Loras’ Rachel Hutchins was named MVP in 2004.

National Qualifying Performances: Klemm and Wartburg’s Heidi Porter automatically qualified for the NCAA indoor track and field Championships with their performances in the weight throw (17.28 meters) and 800-meter run (2:12.05), respectively. Klemm had previously AQ’ed in the shot put. In addition to the automatic qualifiers, NCAA provisional qualifying marks were met 25 times including 15 women and 10 men.

Nine Records Broken: A total of nine Iowa Conference indoor records fell at the 2007 Championship. Klemm and Porter broke their own Conference records set a year ago in the weight throw and 800-meters, respectively. Klemm’s mark in the weight throw of 17.28 meters topped her 2006 mark of 16.16 meters. Porter ran 2:12.05 in the 800 this year, topping her 2:14.16 from last year.

Buena Vista’s KeAnna Martin ran a time of 25.57 seconds in the 200-meter dash, breaking the Conference record of 25.70 seconds set in 2005 by Wartburg’s Bridget Burns. Wartburg’s Rachel Brinks set the Conference mark in the 600-meter run with a time of 1:37.72, breaking the mark that former teammate Steph Arey set in 2005 (1:37.91).

Central’s Jon Robeson broke the men’s weight throw record with a winning mark of 16.43 meters, eclipsing the mark set by Wartburg’s C.J. Yerrington in 2003 by 0.13 meters.

In Friday’s competition, the Loras brother-sister duo of Kyle and Whitney Calvert broke Conference records in men’s and women’s pole vault. Kyle set the men’s mark at 4.91 meters and Whitney set the women’s mark at 3.46. Both broke their own mark set last year, Whitney shared the previous record with Cornell’s Heather Axen. Wartburg’s men’s distance medley relay team (of Patrick Johnson, Derek Peth, Scott Tjeerdsma and Andy Hodge) crossed the finish line in 10:09.06. University of Dubuque’s Jeanriles Metezier broke his own record in the 55-meter dash with a time of 6.39 seconds in the preliminaries.

Schultz & Newsom Named Coaches of the Year: Loras’ Bob Schultz and Wartburg’s Marcus Newsom were named Conference men’s and women’s Coach of the Year, respectively. Schultz led the Duhawks to their second Conference indoor track and field Championship to earn his first Coach of the Year honor. Newsom was named women’s track and field Coach of the Year for the fifth straight year after leading the Knights to Conference titles each of those years.

Complete IIAC Championship results are here. The top-three finishers in each event, including all members of the top-three finishing relay teams, are recognized as All-Conference.

All Iowa Conference schools are scheduled to participate in the Iowa State Last Chance Meet on Saturday, March 3. The NCAA indoor track and field National Championship is March 9-10, at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind.

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