Multi-events set Linfield up nicely for conference meet
April 12, 2016
Last track season, there was only one Wildcat to score among the top eight at the Northwest Conference Multis Championships, but this year’s conference meet reminds the NWC who Linfield is.
Linfield is currently leading the conference championships on both the men’s and women’s side thanks to the decathletes and heptathletes. The men have scored 13 points while the women have scored 15.
Sophomore Olivia Bannerot is now the 2016 NWC Multis champion in the heptathlon. With her personal record of 4,573 points, she is the 2016 NCAA Outdoor Division III leader in the heptathlon.
Bannerot is also now the Linfield school record holder. The record she broke was set in 1999 by Marci Warnecke who had 4,550 points.
Bannerot’s first place effort earned Linfield 10 points going into the rest of the conference championships.
Other scorers on the women’s side were freshman Madeline Shirley and senior Brenna Gomez.
Shirley finished fifth place with a score of 4,105 points, which betters her previous score of 4,099. She is no. seven on the Linfield All-Time Top 10 Records list.
Gomez squeaked into scoring position with an eighth place finish with a score of 3,955.
Shirley and Gomez combined for five points to add to Linfield’s total of 15.
Senior JC Grim was the top performing Wildcat on the men’s side by finishing second place with a score of 6,208 points in the decathlon. George Fox’s Alex Canchola grabbed the conference title with a score of 6,495 points.
Junior Dallas Fagen and Junior Hayden Davisson finished top-eight for the ’Cats.
Fagen earned 5,526 points and placed sixth while Davisson scored a total of 5,477 points for a seventh place effort.
Together, Fagen and Davisson combined for five points.
With the help of these athletes, Linfield is set up nicely for achieving the goal of being conference champions as a men’s and women’s team.
The mulitevent athletes have less than two weeks to prepare for competing in more events at the Northwest Conference Championships, which is set for April 22 and 23 at Lewis and Clark College.