CU Competing In Championships At The Peak

Thursday, February 25

USAFA, Colo.

All Day

Colorado

Championships at the Peak

Photo by: Tim Benko, Benko Photographics

February 23, 2021 | Track and Field

Live Stats Live Stream

By: Shaun Wicen, Assistant SID

BOULDER – Colorado track and field is set to conclude the 2021 indoor season regular season at the Championship At The Peak this Thursday through Saturday, hosted by the Air Force Academy.

The Championships will serve as the replacement as neither the MPSF nor the Mountain West are hosting indoor conference championships this season. All Pac-12 and Mountain West schools are invited along with others such as SMU, Idaho, Northern Arizona, Tulane, Wichita State, Northern Colorado, Grand Canyon and others. The meet begins Thursday with the heptathlon and pentathlon and continues Friday and Saturday. The meet is being run under strict COVID guidelines that limit entries to 500 athletes and only runs four events consecutively with less than 125 athletes at track level at one time.

The meet will be scored with Championship trophies and shirts being given out along with four field and track outstanding athlete awards.

CU is set to compete its full force of athletes across 19 events, beginning with Nick Bianco in the men's heptathlon and Avery McMullen, Jada Green, Elise Gillett and Kara Lucyk in the women's pentathlon.

McMullen is currently sitting one position out of NCAA Championship competition in 17^th in the nation with a score of 3846 in the pentathlon. Her personal best of 3914 would move her up to 11^th, though there are about a dozen athletes currently sitting with greater than 3800 points between the 11^th and 22^nd spot in the nation. McMullen's aim will be to break the 4,000-point barrier for the first time, which would put her in the top-10 in the nation. If McMullen were to hit on all her current indoor personal bests across the five events, her pentathlon score would put her at 4047, just 25 points from the CU school record.

McMullen won't stop there, she is also entered in the long jump, 60 hurdles and high jump individually. In fact, the multis crew will compete Green, Gillett and Lucyk in the hurdles and long jump, while Green will also compete in the shot put.

On the track, Kellen Monestime is the only sprinter for the CU men under 400 meters. He is entered in the hurdles and the 200. Valerie Welch, Tamia Badal and Reese Renz all will hurdle for the women. The 400 crews for both genders consists of seven athletes: Aaron McCoy, Kendal Smith, Garrett Nelson, Ian Gilmore, Tyler Williams, Jaida Drame and Sam Crosmer. Both genders will compete a 4x440 yard relay with all five men and Monestime on the relay card while all five women between the hurdle crew and the 400 are set to compete on the relay card.

The throws crew is made up of Lars Atkinson, Clayton Castro, Lauren Whyrick, Meghan Whyrick, Gya'ni Sami and Obi Osafo-Mensah competing in both the weight throw and shot put.

The duo of Tyler Sconce and Caleb Penner will compete only in the men's weight throw, while Henry Carlson will only toss the shot put. In the women's weight throw, Jane Powers, Elena Opp and Bella Braun will all compete in that event solo.

Moving to the jumps, Ryan Charles and Steve Fossi-Noue are the lone male jumpers with Charles competing in the high jump and long jump while Fossi-Noue competes in the triple jump.

The women's jumps are heavily contested with the four multis in the long jump along with Sarah Aanenson, while Cheyenne Cheshier competes in the triple. Kylee Harr and Allie Routledge compete in the high jump for CU.

The meet will be live streamed (goairforcefalcons.com/AFTrackFieldTV) and have live results (goairforcefalcons.com/TrackFieldResults). Following the conclusion of this meet, NCAA Championship hopefuls will continue indoor prep while the rest transition to outdoors that is set to begin March 19-20 at the tentatively scheduled Jerry Quiller Classic in Boulder.