The Fort Lewis men’s and women’s indoor track teams put all of their training and previous races to good use in the 2024 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships last weekend in Spearfish, South Dakota.

Junior Connor Dosmann, senior Katie Heck and junior Hannah Hartwell all earned All-Conference honors after last weekend’s events concluded.

“It went about as good as it could have gone,” Fort Lewis track coach Shawn Jakubowski said. “We took 11 athletes up there and almost all of them finished higher than their ranking going in. We had three all-conference performances, our (distance medley relay) team podiumed. That was the first indoor all-conference for us in both men’s and women's.”

Heck had the most impressive performance as she finished second in the 800-meter race and broke the meet record with a time of two minutes and 10.26 seconds. This performance earned her first-team all-conference honors and she qualified for the NCAA Division II Indoor Track and Field National Championships on March 8 in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Hartwell finished fifth in her RMAC championship debut in the women’s 5,000-meter race with a time of 17:18.15. This performance earned her second-team all-conference honors.

In the 4,000-meter distance medley relay, Dosmann, sophomore Malakai Hanson, junior Brady Burrough and senior Aaron Busche finished third with a time of 10:14.24.

Dosmann impressed again in the mile by placing fifth with a time of 4:15.29, earning him second-team all-conference honors.

Jakubowski said the meets earlier in the season, specifically the meets in Albuquerque, helped the squad ease the nerves because the Skyhawks were running against top Division I schools like Stanford, Oregon and California. But the smaller invitationals also helped Fort Lewis get a sense of where it stood among other teams in the conference.

bkelly@durangoherald.com