MARION, Ind. – Through two days at the 2023 NAIA Outdoor Track and Field National Championships, the UBC Thunderbirds hold team scoring leads on both the men's and women's sides thanks to several mammoth final performances.
For the first time since Reid Gustavson accomplished the feat in 2010, the T-Birds have an NAIA decathlon champion as freshman
Nate Paris crushed the competition to finish with 7232 points for a 353 point margin of victory. Building upon his first place finishes Wednesday in the 100 metre dash, long jump and 400 metres, Paris topped the field Thursday in the 110 metre hurdles to start the second day of the decathlon much like he did 24 hours prior.
Paris remained in first place after a strong eighth place finish in discus with the final three events still to come. He then followed up with a massive personal 20 centimetre personal best pole vault of 4.20 metres to make his lead extremely hard to catch. Paris threw 48.62 metres in javelin and finished 12
th in the 1500 metres which officially sealed his gold medal status.
A year after finishing fifth in the heptathlon, sophomore
Rebecca Dutchak capped off her 2023 pursuit with a silver medal. Entering Thursday in second place, the Victoria native finished fifth in long jump with a 5.31 metre attempt and earned fourth in javelin reaching 38.57 metres. Closing out the heptathlon with the 800 metres, Dutchak ran a blazing final 200 metres to finish in ninth place and secure second by just four points. Her 4830 total was surpassed only by the gold medallist from Dickinson State with 4922.
Heading into this year's championship meet, the UBC Thunderbirds had claimed the women's 4x800 metre relay in each of their previous three trips to nationals dating back to 2018. Thanks to a brilliant performance by
Elysse Fleming,
Amelia Pfohl,
Holly MacGillivray and
Rachel Mortimer, you can make it four straight titles as they claimed 2023 gold with a time of 8:56.68, nearly three seconds ahead of second place Grace.
For the second straight year,
Olivia Lundman has claimed the NAIA women's 5000 metre race walk title. Her finishing time of 23:24.98 was just over five seconds shy of the national championship record currently held by former Thunderbird Nicola Evangelista back in 2011.
Thanks to
Joean Lu's third place finish and
Cassidy Cardle's fourth, the race walk awards ceremony was awash in blue and gold. The 2023 bronze makes it three medal finishes for Lu since 2019 while Cardle matched her fourth place finish in 2022.
Freshman T-Bird
Nikhil Hirani finished fifth in the men's 5000 metre race walk with a time of 24:01.97, nearly 20 seconds better than his previous personal best.
On her last attempt in the women's triple jump final,
Allison MacDonald launched into a personal best of 12.19 metres to claim fifth place, earning another four points towards UBC's total.
Competing in his first NAIA national meet, freshman
Matthew Uliana claimed a seventh place finish Thursday after throwing a personal best 50.13 metres.
Little more than three hours prior to claiming gold in the 4x800 relay, both MacGillivray and
Rachel Mortimer secured spots in Friday's 800 metre final automatic qualifying times in their respective heats.
Hanna Sobkowich had already qualified for Friday's women's 200 metre final and she's now set to compete in the 100 metre final as well after securing an automatic time with a second place finish in her heat on Thursday.
A typical strong event for the T-Birds, Friday's 5000 metre finals will see a combined four in the blue and gold running for points after
Marley Beckett and
Katie Newlove on the women's side and
John Perrier and
Jaiveer Tiwana on the men's side all advanced with qualifying heat times.
With the final day – and still the majority of final events to be held – to come on Friday, the T-Birds have a commanding 34 point lead in the quest to successfully defend their 2022 national title. With 59 points thus far for UBC, William Carey holds second place with 25.
The men's side is a much tighter affair with the T-Birds' 31 points just 12.75 ahead of second place Midland.
The meet schedule and results can be found
HERE while livestream information can be located
HERE.
