DIII Nationals Day Two Recap: Field

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Seven national champions will be crowned today: men and women in the shot put, high jump, and triple jump, and the men’s heptathlon.

Your first three: Roger Steen of Eau Claire won the men’s shot put with a meet record 18.81 meters, Gladys Njoku of Stevens won the women’s high jump at 1.72 meters (she beat Cortland’s Taylor Hudson on misses), and Jamie Ruginski went 14.49 to win the men’s triple jump. Eau Claire also took third in the shot, which has major team implications. We interviewed all three national champions after their wins:

Steen, Ruginski, and Njoku are all familiar with intense battles at nationals. Steen has been second, third, and third at nationals the last two years, Ruginski has now won the last three titles in the triple (the triple-triple!) and Njoku is a first-time champ after losing last year’s HJ in a jump-off.

Brandon Zarnoth of Eau Claire locked up the heptathlon after Central’s Eric Larson had a snafu in the vault. On Larson’s first time on the runway, he ran towards the pit but didn’t do enough with the pole to have it counted as an attempt. The officials then warned him about being on the clock and visually signalled that time was running out, but Larson ran out the clock and then missed his next two jumps. After an argument with the officials, he was permitted to take a fourth (in his mind, third) vault; multiple coaches protested this and their protests were upheld. This is not to undersell Zarnoth; even if Larson scored 1400 points in the final two events, he would have finished over a hundred points behind Zarnoth, who posted the second best score in DIII history and missed the national record by just nine points. I talked to Zarnoth and his teammate Greg Peterson about their emotional 1-2 finish.

The biggest upset in the field on Saturday came in the women’s shot put. Cherae Reeves of Concordia-Moorhead was seeded third overall and fifty-six centimeters off of the national lead. But she was indisputably the best today, as she produced four throws that were good enough to win, with her best at 14.71 meters.

La Crosse won the other two field events of the day. Dominique Neloms finished a legendary jump double, clearing 2.11 meters to beat RIC’s Steven Vazquez on misses in the high jump. Neloms told me afterward that his groin pain was seriously bothering him.

And not to be outdone in flexibility, his female teammate Bria Halama won the triple jump before running a leg on the winning 4×4. Her 12.43 meters makes Halama the seventh best jumper in DIII history.