Bearcat heptathletes shine through rain

HENRY JANSSEN/DAILY FORUM
Shelley Laures takes her approach to throw the javelin in the second half of the Friday/Saturday Ashley Nally Heptathlon. Laures finished fourth of nine competitors.

The Northwest Missouri State University made the best of a dreary few days this past weekend, hosting the Ashley Nally Heptathlon and Herschel Neil Decathlon with Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference’s Minnesota State being the only other team in attendance.

The meet began at 2 p.m. on Friday and resumed Saturday morning, finishing up mid-afternoon.

“This year, it was smaller, but it was still competitive. I was glad Minnesota State attended, and we had a good meet,” Northwest coach Scott Lorek said. “The women got pretty lucky. It was lousy until the start of the long jump, their first event today, then it actually got pretty reasonable the rest of the day.”

In the women’s heptathlon, Northwest brought home the top four spots. Kelsey Lacy won the event with 4583 points, and Audrey Wichmann and Bryn Matulka were close behind with respective scores of 4537 and 4513 across the seven events. Shelley Laures finished fourth with 4338 points.

“I was proud of how everyone competed coming off of spring break,” Wichmann said. “It didn’t feel like it was going to be a really good weekend for us, but everyone did really well considering everything. We were a little worried about the weather, but when we competed it ended up being nice enough. It wasn’t anything we didn’t know we could do, but scoring like that early in the season is a big accomplishment.”

Matulka’s winning time of 14.79 in the 100-meter hurdles was her fastest ever. Wichmann’s 2:22.78 800-meter run was eight seconds better than any of the eight other participants. Laures dominated the javelin throw with a toss of 40 meters – more than three full meters better than Minnesota State’s Dallas Weiss. Lacy’s long jump of 5.46 meters was furthest of the nine competitors, and Wichmann and Matulka were the only other athletes to clear five meters.

Lorek said that he was pleasantly surprised with how well his girls performed.

“On our women’s side, we had three provisional qualifiers and three women over 4500 points which is really outstanding,” Lorek said. “Kelsey Lacy had a very solid national-caliber score. It’s probably not a score that would get her to the national meet, but then when you consider that we have three athletes over 4500, there’s not many teams anywhere that can do that. Shelley Laures isn’t far from being at that level. I expected one over 4400, not three over 4500.”

Lorek’s only males to compete in the 10-event weekend were Derrick Schluter, Phil Elliott, and Bryce Sheard.

Sheard said that he is not a decathlete, but appealed to his coaches to be allowed to compete in the first day.

Lorek said that Elliott’s performance stood out to him – especially given the driving rain the men competed through on Saturday morning – and that he could be the Bearcat decathlete to watch in the coming seasons. Elliott finished in third place with 5741 points, including a 4:41.72 1500 meters scoring him 670.

Lorek said that he is excited for all of the athletes that competed this weekend.

“Phil’s only a freshman. You’ve got to watch out for that guy in the next few years. He’s just a decathlete, he loves the events. He’s a consummate track guy, give him a little time and he’ll be very, very good.

“We had enough things that didn’t go optimally, and we have a lot of things we can improve on with all of our athletes. We’ve got some improvement to do in the hurdles, and we need to get faster in the 200. The rest of the season is fine-tuning, doing things better technically. As far as fitness and conditioning, we’re there. I’m happy with those scores early on, and I know they’ll all make another jump.”

HENRY JANSSEN/DAILY FORUM
Phil Elliott hurls the shot put on Friday in last weekend’s Herschel Neil Decathlon. Coach Scott Lorek said that he is very enthusiastic about the freshman’s potential in coming years.