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A fast start meant for a big first day total in the decathlon for senior
Quintin Porterfield, as he sits in second place after the first day of the decathlon at the Big Sky Conference Track and Field Championships Wednesday (May 12) in Ogden, Utah.
Led by winning performances in the first two events, Porterfield had 3,694 points on the first day to trail leader Caleb Whitney from host Weber State by 84 points. Sophomore
Elijah Conley (seventh, 3,211), freshman
Chris Homen (ninth, 3,150) and junior
Parker Wubbena (10th, 3,016), are also competing in the decathlon for EWU.
In the women's heptathlon, sophomore
Madelyn Knight sits in eighth place after the first day with 2,755 points. Sophomore
Hayden McAuliff is 13th with 2,536.
Both Porterfield and Knight are ahead of their first-day point totals from their season-best performances earlier this year. The final five events of the decathlon, as well as the last three in the women's heptathlon, take place on Thursday (May 13). The decathlon starts at 9 a.m. Pacific time and the women's heptathlon begins at 9:30 a.m.
"All the Eagles performed at a high level today," said Eastern assistant and multi-events coach
Dave Nielsen. "We look forward to another great day tomorrow."
Porterfield opened the decathlon competition with a personal-best 11.01 time in the 100 meters to score 858 points. He then scored 850 points with another personal best in the long jump, leaping 23-5 1/2 to also win that event. He closed the day with a 50.68 time in the 400 meters to score 784 points and place third among the 11 competitors.
His shot put of 36-3 1/2 was also a career high, and he had a 6-0 clearance in the high jump to barely miss his college best of 6-0 1/2. His 400 time was a best this season but shy of his personal best of 49.68.
"Quintin had a tremendous first day of competition," said Nielsen of Porterfield, who led the competition after three events with 2,257 points. "The only performance he had today that wasn't either a personal record or season best was the high jump, and in that event he missed by only one centimeter."
Homan was second in the 100 with a time of 11.24 to score 808 points – his high for the day. Conley (744, 11.54) and Wubbena (717, 11.67) also had their top scores in the 100. In addition, Conley had the second-best shot put in the field with an effort of 38-10 1/4 to score 597 points.
Knight began the heptathlon with a time of 14.74 in the 100-meter hurdles to place fourth and score 876 points. She came up .14 shy of her personal-best time of 14.60, which is fourth-fastest in school history and ranks her No. 10 among competitors in that event in the regular portion of the meet, with preliminaries on Friday.
Knight also scored 782 points in the 200 with a time of 26.17 and 621 in the high jump with a clearance of 4-11. McAuliff's top scoring event was 814 points in the 200 with a 25.81 time to rank sixth among the 13 competitors.
Porterfield entered the competition ranked fifth among entrants with 5,903 points set at the Bigfoot Multis in Spokane in April. He scored 3,443 points on the first day of that competition. His personal best of 6,038 points came at the 2018 Big Sky Conference Championships when he placed eighth.
In addition, entering the Big Sky meet Eastern held down the No. 6 (Wubbena, 5,630), No. 7 (Conley, 5,601) and No. 8 (Homen, 5,533) positions in that event.
Knight entered with the third-best performance in the heptathlon with 4,749 points to rank fourth in school history. Her best also came at the Bigfoot Multis when she scored 2,911 points on the first day. McAuliff went to Ogden ranked seventh in the league with 4,175 points.
The regular portion of the meet begins with field events at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (May 14), with running events starting at 12:30 p.m. The final day of the competition begins at 8:30 a.m. Pacific time, followed by running events at 1 p.m. Preliminaries will take place in running events through the 800 meters, and all other running events and all field events will be run as finals.
As a team, the Eagles are seeking to improve upon their finishes in 2019 when the meet was last held. Eastern's men finished sixth while the women were seventh, but in 2018 the men were fourth and the women sixth.
