RALEIGH, N.C. – On the opening day of the ACC Outdoor Track & Field Championships, sophomore Martina Schultze retained her title as the conference’s top women’s pole vaulter at Paul H. Derr Track on the campus of NC State.
After winning the pole vault a year ago in Charlottesville, Va., in her first season as a Hokie, Schultze claimed this year’s crown with a mark of 13-5¼ (4.10m). After passing on her on the first three heights, the sophomore breezed through her first two heights, clearing the bar on her first two jumps of the afternoon. That proved to be the difference as Schultze and North Carolina’s and Cameron Overstreet were unable to clear the next height. The tiebreaker went to the Hokie as Overstreet missed on her first attempt 4.10 meters.
Not only was the win Schultze’s second outdoor conference championship, becoming the first female vaulter to accomplish that feat at Virginia Tech, it was her third-straight ACC crown after winning the indoor title during the winter.
Opening up the day in the morning for the Hokies was the newest member of the team in mid-year transfer Sarah Kadelka. With two fouls heading into her last attempt of the finals, the native of Germany finished fourth in the javelin by hitting a mark of 146-4 (44.60m).
In the grueling decathlon, which saw one of the nine competitors drop out during the first event of the day, Matt Hoogland finds himself in eighth place with 3,001 points entering the final five events tomorrow. The redshirt sophomore is 226 points out of seventh.
As the opening day moved into the early evening, sophomore Leah Nugent qualified for Saturday’s final as she finished second in heat one with new personal best after clocking in at 58.47.
It was a good night for the Hokie 200-meter group as both Darrell Wesh and Jonathan McCants posted new personal records as they went 1-2 in their heat. Wesh came in at 20.80, just ahead of Mcants’ time of 20.87. For both, it was the first time in their careers that they have posted a sub-21-second mark. Freshman Tadashi Pinder also crossed the line with a new best at 21.36, grabbing the last spot in Saturday’s final away from Virginia’s Payton Hazzard by one-thousandth of a second. It will be a Hokie-Tiger showdown in the final as Clemson earned four of the five spots.
The 1500 meters saw five Hokies move on to the finals as Shannon Morton and Katarina Smiljanec advanced on the women’s side and Grant Pollock, Ryan Hagen and Juan Campos got through on the men’s side. Morton came in at 4:27.83, second in her heat, while Smiljanec just barely edged out teammate Paige Kvartunas by less than a half second for the last spot in the finals.
Grant Pollock paced the men’s field at 3:46.73 as he took control late in his heat over Wake Forest’s Kyle Graves who led most of the race. Hagen (3:47.55) and Campos (3:53.07) both took second in their heats to advance to the finals.
Leoule Degfae finished out the night with a fifth-place finish in the men’s 10,000 meters to pick up the first points of the day for the men’s team.
After the first day, both Hokie teams sit in sixth place. The women have 15 points while the men have four. Tomorrow’s action will start at 10:30 a.m., for the Hokies as Matthias Treff and Jaka Muhar will make their season debuts. All events originally scheduled for tomorrow evening have all moved up two hours due to inclement weather that is expected to move through the area.
For updates on Virginia Tech track & field, follow the Hokies on Twitter (@VT_Track).