Friday Night Flights

With the Big Sky Championships less than two weeks away, the Vikings will hit the track one last time today at the Pacific Twilight meet in Forest Grove, Ore. It will be the last chance for athletes to improve their times and distances before the conference finale.

For those athletes who have yet to meet the conference-qualifying standard, or are ranked lower than 14th in their event, it will be their last chance to extend their season beyond Friday evening.

On the men’s side, the Vikings have five athletes who have already qualified for the Big Sky Championships, held at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, Calif., from May 14 to 17.

Freshman Jesse Fassler (800m), sophomore Nick Trubachik (decathlon, javelin), juniors Vince Kinney (decathlon) and Peter Jason Tait (110m HH) and senior Trevor Rollinger (400m IH) have all exceeded the automatic qualifying standards.

Five more members of the men’s team are currently ranked in the top 14 of their respective events, which would also ensure them a place in the championship meet.

Freshman Brookman Holmes’ season-best 800-meter time of 1:55.02 is good enough to put him at No. 14 in the Big Sky, but is two-hundredths of a second short of guaranteeing him a spot in Sacramento. With track athletes throughout the region hoping to peak in the next couple of weeks, this minute margin could be the difference between moving on or staying home.

“A lot of the fastest times are yet to be run,” said senior hurdler Trevor Rollinger. “You train so you peak and run your best times at the end of the season.”

The Viking women have a handful of athletes who have met Big Sky qualifying standards as well. Senior thrower Caressa Sims has had the most impressive campaign of any Viking this spring. Sims has already set a new Portland State record in the hammer throw with a toss of 189’8″, and is currently fourth in Big Sky in the shot put with a throw of 46’4.25″.

“Watching her compete and seeing her work ethic in practice is inspiring,” Rollinger said of Sims. “It brings the whole morale of the team up.”

Sims will be accompanied to the conference championships by Portland State’s other women qualifiers, including sophomore Jernise Saunders (100m), sophomore Nkeiru Ogwoaba (triple jump, long jump), junior Adriane Wai (800m), junior Tiffany Bigham (discus) and freshman Stephanie Deever (10,000m).

Head coach Kebba Tolbert singled out the performance by Deever and fellow 10,000-meter runner junior Emily Hoover’s outing last weekend as the single best performance by any Vikings this season.

At the Western Oregon Twilight meet on April 18, Deever ran a Big Sky qualifying time of 38:20.91 in the first 10,000m race of her career, and Hoover lowered her personal best time by more than four minutes to finish in 38:37.82 at the meet.

“Those two in the 10k at Western has been the performance of the year,” Tolbert said. “To chop several minutes off of their times was very inspiring to our team, to see how hard they worked to do that.”