The Fort Lewis College men’s and women’s indoor track and field teams showed they can compete with the best of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference at the RMAC championships in Colorado Springs last weekend.
Sophomore sprinter Zachary Gaumont made history for the Skyhawks, becoming the first FLC indoor track athlete to win an event. Gaumont won the 60-meter title in 6.74 seconds and earned first team all-conference. He beat Kymani Sterling of UCCS by a tenth of a second.
The Skyhawks men finished tied seventh out of 12 schools with 23 team points. UCCS won the men’s team title with 191 points.
“We did a really great job on the track,” FLC cross country/track and field head coach Dalton Graham said. “It's hard to, on paper, compete with schools with a full set of jumpers and throwers and things that are added team scores. But with who we took, we did a really good job. Having Zach break a school record going into prelims, then turn around and basically the first event of day two win the meet and set a school record provisional standard. He got 0.12 seconds faster in the 60-meters over the last two weeks of the season. So definitely came on at the right time and set the tone for the group.”
The cutoff for the NCAA championships in the 60 was 6.69, according to Graham. He’s excited to see how Gaumont can build off the progress he made in indoor track once outdoor track starts. Graham said Gaumont has done a better job putting the three phases of the race (start, middle, end) together whereas in the beginning of the year he’d be strong in one area.
Freshman Peyton Whitehead had a solid first appearance at the RMAC Indoor Track and Field Championships. He finished fifth in the 800 in one minute, 55.97 seconds. Tim Thompson from Colorado School of Mines won the race in 1:53.46.
Graham said Whitehead has raced like a veteran ever since he stepped on campus. He’s very coachable and closes the races really hard. Graham said Whitehead is learning to be confident at the beginning of the races and being in the mix early on.
Behind Whitehead was graduate student Aaron Busche in seventh in 1:56.55. Freshman Brody Hubbard finished seventh in the mile in 4:23.81.
In the 4x400, freshman Orlando Guevara, Gaumont, Whitehead and senior Brady Burrough finished ninth in 3:30.44. Graham said the team wasn’t super focused on the 4x400 with the athletes focusing on other events and therefore not being super fresh for the 4x400.
The men’s indoor team is on to the outdoor season, with the Skyhawks opening at CSU Pueblo on March 21.
FLC’s women’s indoor track and field team finished ninth out of 13 schools with 10 points. Colorado School of Mines won the women’s team title with 140.50 points.
Hannah Hartwell led the Skyhawks women with a third-place finish in the 3000, finishing in 9:57.51. Anna Fauskee from UCCS won the race in 9:44.85. Hartwell’s time was good enough to qualify for the national championships in Indianapolis from March 13-15.
“It was a really strong showing,” FLC associate head cross country/track and field coach Gracen Key said. “We set another school record in the four by four and then we ran a DMR (Distance Medley Relay) for the first time since 2018 and set a school record for that. It was one of those situations where it's really nice to have the numbers to put relays together; we were less than two-hundredths of a second off the provisional standard for the DMR … the fact that we're right there and kind of last minute throwing together a distance medley relay, I'm really pleased with those efforts.”
The Distance Medley Relay involves a 1,200-meter leg, a 400-leg, 800-leg and 1600-leg. FLC finished sixth with a 12:25.36 with junior Alliyah Molina, freshman Taylor Rittman, junior Janaya Mancell and Hartwell. CSU Pueblo won the race in 11:44.85.
FLC also finished eighth in the 4x400 in 4:02.13. Rittman, junior Claire Peterson, Mancell and junior Josie Coulter competed for the Skyhawks. Adams State won the race in 3:47.87.
Key said the eighth place was on par with what was expected since FLC was ranked eighth in that event coming in. Key said she was proud of Peterson’s anchoring split, which was technically a PR for her.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
