History in the High Desert
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Men’s Track and Field Captures First-Ever Individual Conference Title
The men’s and women’s track and field teams closed their indoor season with multiple top performances and a conference title at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) championships at the University of Nevada.
On the women’s side, the performance of the meet came in the 5K, where sophomore Angelina Lione ran a gutsy 17:07 (16:39 altitude converted), good enough for eighth overall and a PR. Lione, in her best showing of the season, held on to the chase pack for the majority of the race and closed hard to secure Pacific’s first points of the meet.
On the men’s side, junior Jack Weber delivered a stunner in the mile, winning from the slow heat and taking down many of the nation’s top milers in the process. Making the best of an unfortunate heat draw, Weber ran from the front to secure a 4:15 finish, four seconds ahead of the next runner to cross the line.
Weber would not have to wait long to see where he finished overall. After the runners in the second heat came through 800 meters in a pedestrian 2:25, it became apparent that the group would need to run just over world-record pace for the next 800 meters to match Weber’s time, a near-impossible feat.
The race had not even entered its final lap when Pacific’s celebrations began, and as the runners rounded the final turn, 4:15 ticked by. Weber took his spot atop the podium shortly after, a historic result for Pacific’s budding Track and Field program.
Other notable performances came in the women’s 800, where senior Sofia Livingston ran an altitude-converted 2:19 to finish a storied career in the orange and black, and junior Gianna Solano ran a PR in a converted 2:22, which came after a 28-second PR in the mile just hours earlier, dropping from 5:43 to 5:15.
In the men’s 200 meters, sophomore sprinter Amir Brooks cruised to a personal best of 23.32, following a 60-meter where Brooks and junior Jonathan Jones went head to head, with Jones coming out on top.
With the conclusion of the indoor season, track and field now turns to outdoor, where they will look to build on their success. With upcoming meets at San Francisco State, Stanford, and in Southern California, Pacific is poised to put the program on the map this season.