Heating up the track

On Saturday, the Portland State track and field teams returned to Washington state for the UW Invitational. While there, juniors Joenisha Vinson and Tony Crisofulli broke two more school records in their respective events.

Vinson broke the PSU record in the pentathlon with her cumulative score of 3,647. She also finished fourth overall in the meet, and met the pentathlon qualifying mark for this month’s Big Sky Championship. Vinson also set new personal records in the 800m and the shot put portion of the pentathlon, and is ranked second in the conference.

Crisofulli broke the school record in the 800m with a time of 1 minute, 50.78 seconds, which beat his old time by two seconds. With this new time, Crisofulli also qualified for the NCAA regionals, which makes him the first qualifier of the year.

Other accomplishments were made by sophomore Amber Rozcicha, who ran the one-mile and made a new personal record of 5:10.36 minutes, which places her at No. 10 in the Portland State record book.

Also making his first heptathlon appearance was junior J.J. Rosenberg. In the course of two days, he competed up against two of the top heptathletes in the country as well as former PSU All-American, Nick Trubachik. He also had a combined score 4,401, which is a mere 199 points away from qualifying for the Big Sky Championship.

In the women’s 60m event, senior Karene King and sophomore Geronne Black placed fifth and sixth, respectively. King barely beat Black by .01 seconds.

“The women’s team looks great in the conference standings right now,” said assistant coach Cassie Stilley. “We’re leading in three events.”

Many other personal records were almost made this last weekend as well. Sophomore Brittany Long missed a new personal record in the 3,000m by five seconds; her time was 11:00.11 minutes. Then in the men’s 3,000m, senior Andrew Slag just missed his personal record by three seconds. His time, which was 8:32.81, was 2.81 seconds away from the Big Sky qualifying time. However, his time in the 3,000m qualified him for the 5,000m event.

For their next meet, the Vikings will head out to New York, N.Y. to compete in one of the top-ranking meets in the nation, the New Balance College Invitational.

“Next weekend we’ll be racing in New York City, where the team will have the chance [to] carry this momentum forward and test themselves against the outstanding competitors in a really high-adrenaline environment.” said Stilley. “That combination of factors should produce some terrific results.” ?