Marquette Women’s Track & Field Wins Their Second Straight Big East Indoor Title!

Marquette deployed dominance at the field events to win their second straight Big East women’s indoor track and field title on Saturday. The Golden Eagles eclipsed Villanova by a score of 173.5 to 149.5. Including the outdoor side of the aisle, the MU women have now won three straight Big East track and field titles.

On the men’s side, Marquette finished second at the indoor championships for the third year in a row. DePaul ended up taking the title with 146 points, followed by MU at 135.

The Marquette women had four individual winners, all coming in field events. Omo Tseumah won her second straight indoor high jump title, Monique Felix won her second straight pentathlon title, and Terica Harris won both the long jump and the triple jump. That gave MU victories in four of the seven field events, which might have been impressive enough. But it was their ability to place athletes in scoring positions in multiple events that led the way to victory. Marquette went 2-4-5-6 in the pole vault, 1-4-5 in the long jump, 1-2 in the triple jump, 2-3-7 in the weight throw, and, perhaps most impressively, 1-2-3-3 in the high jump, with Felix tying Tseumah for the best height and Bridget Bodee and Breanna Marchan coming in level with DePaul’s Caroline Muller for a third place tie.

Villanova actually had a very slim lead in the points standing until the final event of the meet, which ended up being the high jump. Marquette just needed to make sure they got two more points in the even than the Wildcats, and the women involved teamed up to take four of the five best spots in the event to lock up the title. I love this quote from Bert Rogers in the official Marquette recap:

“We were kind of chipping away all day, but the moment that stands out for me was during the women’s high jump,” Marquette head coach Bert Rogers said. “They all got hot together, making season-best bars, personal-best bars. When Monique made 1.70, she was so excited. Here she was in the high jump when we didn’t think she was going to have enough energy to compete. The emotion there was indicative of the weekend for us.”

Thanks to her second place finishes in the high jump and the triple jump along with a fourth place finish in the long jump, Felix was named the Field Event Outstanding Performer of the meet.

The men’s side of the event featured two individual event victories for Marquette with Daniel Armstrong winning the high jump and William Ford taking first place in the pole vault. Armstrong set a personal best of 2.15 meters (7’0.5”) to win and set a Marquette freshman record as well. Joshua Word helped out with a school record 6.90 seconds time in the 60 meter dash to finish second, and MU got a big push from the 4x800 meter relay team of Derek Gross, Brad Egan, Gregory Suarez, and Alec Miller posting the fastest Marquette time in the event in 34 years.

You can check out the full results of the event right here.