The Iowa men’s and women’s track and field teams both finished in the top five at the Big Ten Indoor Championships inside the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis on Friday and Saturday.
The Hawkeye men took home a fifth-place finish with 62 points behind champion Oregon while the women finished fourth with 51 points — also behind the Ducks again in first.
At the end of day one, the men’s team sat in fourth place with 24 points, and the women found themselves rather behind in eighth place with 11 team points. But first-year Pauline Bikembo and second-year Ryan Johnson each walked away with championship titles at their respective events on Friday.
Bikembo set the all-time Iowa record for the women’s pentathlon, scoring 4,330 points. The first-year recorded a first-place finish in the high jump along with two top-five finishes in long jump and 60-meter hurdles. Bikembo wrapped up the best performance of her young career with two eighth-place finishes in the shot put and 800 meters.
In his first year with the Hawkeyes after transferring from Eastern Michigan, Johnson won the championship title in the weight throw, achieving a distance of 24.38 meters. This is the first time an Iowa thrower has won this title in the program’s history.
A total of 13 Hawkeyes qualified for the finals on Saturday.
There, Iowa found second-place finishes in the men’s and women’s 4×400-meter relays. Hawkeye third-year Gabby Cortez also recorded a first-place finish in the women’s 600-meter race along with fourth-year Alli Bookin-Nosbisch finishing fourth in the same event.
Sal Capaldo was the top performer for the men, finishing third in the men’s heptathlon with 5,528 points. A second-place finish in the 60-meter hurdles and two third-place finishes in the 60 meters and high jump fueled his progress.
“What an amazing weekend for our team,” Iowa Director of Track and Field Joey Woody told HawkeyeSports. “I am so proud of our athletes and staff for how we competed the entire weekend all the way through the last event. The athletes were ferocious competitors all weekend and really showed out in this championship environment. Finishing top five for both genders is a terrific performance in the first indoor championships in the new Big Ten.”
Up next
The Iowa men’s and women’s track and field teams will travel to Virginia Beach, Virginia, to compete at the NCAA Indoor Championships on March 14 and 15.