The Iowa track and field team capped off the indoor season on Feb. 23 and 24 at the Big Ten meet, with the women placing fifth and the men placing seventh. Considering the beliefs of the coaches and athletes throughout the season, the weekend seemed like a disappointment.
It was and it wasn’t. Both teams wanted to win the title, but track and field isn’t a sport based on a dichotomy of just wins and losses. The women were fifth, but their 74 points were the most they had scored at Big Tens since 2007.
Jahisha Thomas, who won the triple jump (13.22 meters) and the long jump (6.42 meters), was named the Big Ten Women’s Field Athlete of the Championships.
Thomas won two of the four titles that the women took home — a record for the team at Big Tens.
“I was always thinking double the whole time,” Thomas told Hawkeye Sports. “I was thinking it into existence. I was training like I was going to win both.”
Thomas was sidelined at the beginning of the season with an injury, competing for the first time at the Black and Gold Premier, the Hawkeyes’ last home meet. She set a school record in the triple jump that day, 13.11 meters.
Thomas was one of the highlights of the Big Tens Championships for Iowa, but Briana Guillory and Brittany Brown also shone. Brown won the 200, followed closely by Guillory, who finished second. She won the 400.
For the men, Mar’yea Harris finished second in the 400. For most athletes, a silver medal is a coveted award, but Harris headed into the Big Tens as the leader in the event. He ran the fastest time in the preliminaries, so when he was edged out by just .03 seconds in the final by Rutgers’ Izaiah Brown, it felt like a disappointment.
Harris is still a top runner in the nation, but another second-place finish wasn’t what he strove for.
Harris, Collin Hofacker, Dejuan Frye, and Bradford Garron had a similar outcome in the 4×400 relay. The team, which came into the weekend with the top time, finished third behind Ohio State and Penn State. Their time of 3:05.33 was only .24 seconds behind Ohio State’s first-place mark.
It wasn’t all close and unfortunate finishes for the men. The distance medley relay team (Nathan Mylenek, Chris Thompson, Carter Lilly, and Michael Melchert) won the first conference title in the event in school history. Melchert, who anchors the event, passed five other opponents in the final 200 meters on the way to victory.
Like all teams at Big Tens, things could have gone better for Iowa, but they also could have gone a lot worse.
The indoor season was filled with broken school records and national recognition. The team hosted the Larry Wieczorek Invitational, a spectacle that showcased Iowa’s relevance to professional athletes and some of the best teams in the country.