Track & Field Travels To Western Oregon For John Knight Twilight
April 11, 2013
Accepted Entries (PDF) | Meet Schedule
CORVALLIS, Ore. - The Oregon State track and field team returns to action this week as the Beavers make the trip to Monmouth for Western Oregon's seventh annual John Knight Twilight on Friday. Field events begin at 2 p.m. and track events are slated to start at 3:50 p.m.
OSU's entries will consist of 20 student-athletes in 14 different events and be similar to last weekend's lineup at the Willamette Invitational. The Beavers will have competitors in the hurdles, jumps, throws, steeple, 400m, 800m and 1,500m.
Held at McArthur Field on WOU's campus, the John Knight Twilight honors former WOU track and field head coach John Knight. Knight coached WOU's track and field program from 1989 to 2003 and had 17 individual national champions during that time, and won national coach of the year honors in 2003 (NCAA) and 1993 (NAIA).
Other schools at the meet include Portland, Willamette, Northwest Christian and Concordia, among many others. Tickets for the event are $6 for adults and $4 for non-WOU students and seniors.
Mary Claire Brenner will lead off the action for Oregon State around 3:15 p.m. when she aims to better her mark in the shot put for the sixth consecutive meet. The Beaver senior came in fifth in the same event at the Willamette Invite last Saturday with a PR toss of 41' 3¾".
Brenner, who will also throw the javelin (4 p.m.) and discus (5:15 p.m.), will be joined in those two by Kayla Fleskes. The freshman's javelin mark of 128' 10" at the Beavers' first home meet on March 23 is the 18th best in the conference thus far and is the furthest for any OSU student-athlete since 1986. Her discus PR of 132' 0" from the season's first outdoor meet is also 22nd in the Pac-12 and just outside Oregon State's all-time top-10 list.
In addition to Brenner and Fleskes, senior Julian Dansk will compete in the men's discus and in doing so will become the first male thrower at Oregon State since 1988. At that year's NCAA Championships in Eugene, John Thomas earned All-America honors in the hammer with a toss of 205' 10" in the final appearance by an OSU student-athlete in track & field competition before the program was discontinued. The former Oregon State men's rower competed unattached in the discus at the Beavers' home meet late last month, throwing 112' 3" to finish in third place.
In the other field events, Kaitlyn Mason and Michele Turney will compete in the long jump at 3:30 p.m. Both will also be in the triple jump immediately after alongside sophomore Rylee Marshall. Turney's school record in the triple jump of 39' ½" from March 23 is currently 11th in the Pac-12.
The top eight athletes in the preliminaries will advance to the finals in the throws and horizontal jumps.
At 5 p.m. Justine Bird, Lucinda Howard and Kristin Oenning are entered in the high jump. It will be Howard's first competition since the Willamette Opener on March 2 when she leapt 5' 5¼", currently second on OSU in 2013 and 23rd in the conference.
Coming off a PR in the event at last weekend's Willamette Invite (15.50), Michele Turney will kick off Oregon State's performances on the track in the 110-meter hurdles at 4:10 p.m. At 5:50 p.m. Justine Bird will race in the 400 hurdles for the second consecutive week and at 6 p.m. Ryan Cope will be in the men's 400 hurdles.
Taylor Hunt and Carly Januzzi will race in the 400 at 4:35 p.m. and Lauren Graebner and Ashley Mayfield will be in the 800 at 5:20 p.m. Adrienne Demaree, Aly Nielson, Maureen Tremblay and Emily Wheeler are the Beavers' entries in the 1,500 at 6:40 p.m. The race will serve as Wheeler's initial try at that distance this season and the first for Demaree and Nielson since the Willamette Opener on March 2. Freshman Morgan Anderson will also race the 1,500 unattached.
Whitney Pitman and Hilary Sharpe will round out Oregon State's track efforts in the steeple at 8 p.m. Pitman's time in the event of 11:30.88 from the San Francisco State Distance Carnival two weeks ago currently places her 17th among Pac-12 runners.
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