BOZEMAN, Mont. — In their lone opportunity this outdoor season to compete at their home facility, the Montana State track and field team made it count while benefitting from beautiful weather as they took to Bobcat Track & Field Complex on Friday for the Tom Gage Classic. 

The 2025 regular season finale was highlighted by a school record from Harvey Cramb in the 800 meters, plus more all-time top-ten marks across the distance, jumps, and throws groups. 

Facing off with in-state competitors from Montana, Montana Tech, and Rocky Mountain College, Montana State made strides to ready themselves ahead of next week’s 2025 Big Sky Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Sacramento, California. 

“There were a lot of good things,” head coach Lyle Weese said. “Obviously we had not as many of our sprinters compete today since they’re resting up for next week, and the jumpers were maybe a little bit of a mix. With the distance and the throws, I thought we went out there and competed well and I thought we showed mostly in all areas great consistency, which is always good heading into a championship meet that you can replicate marks regardless of the meet or the location—the consistency was awesome.” 

Leading the day was the 800 meter race from Australian sophomore Harvey Cramb, who broke his own school record from a year ago with an altitude-converted time of 1:47.22. 

The mark shaved a second off his previous-best from this time last year, and gives the 2025 NCAA indoor All-American in the mile the No. 27 mark in the nation in the 800. Cramb also ranks No. 21 in the country this season in the 1,500 meters. 

“Harvey’s race was so impressive because he led from start to finish and got out really hard,” Weese said. “He doesn’t race the 800 all that often, so it’s not something he’s super used to. Especially getting out that hard I think made it a very challenging situation for him but he hung on and ran a really fast time.” 

In the men’s 1,500 meters, the Bobcats executed their gameplan of getting junior Sam Ells qualified for the NCAA West First Rounds.

With three-time All-American Rob McManus setting the pace through the first two-plus laps, Ells crossed the line in an eye-popping, altitude-converted time of 3:38.19, the third-fastest time in school history behind only Duncan Hamilton (2023) and Harvey Cramb (2025). 

“Sam’s kind of on the edge for Regionals in the 5,000 meters,” Weese said, “So we wanted to take today and make sure it was a focus of our distance team to make sure that he is in for sure in the 1,500 meters so that he doesn’t have to worry about it. It was nice to get that regional mark taken care of for Sam so that he can just go and race at conference and not worry about times.” 

The top-48 marks in both the West and East Regions advance to the NCAA First Rounds, and Ells did more than enough to punch his ticket to College Station in late May. Friday’s race puts him at No. 31 nationally and No. 15 in the West Region. 

In the women’s 1,500 meters, sophomore Eva Koos continued her breakout season with an electric race that catapulted her into second place all-time in Montana State history. 

The Wisconsin native crossed the line in an altitude-converted time of 4:22.84, behind only teammate Kyla Christopher-Moody in the race who set the school record in March. 

In fact, Koos’ time just would have narrowly been the school record itself by four one-hundredths of a second had Christopher-Moody not set it, edging out Holly Stanish from 1988 (4:22.88). 

In the women’s 800 meters, the Bobcats got a big race from sophomore Annie Kaul. 

The native of Plentywood, Montana, won handily in an altitude-converted time of 2:09.01, now the third-fastest time in school history after narrowly surpassing her teammate, Jada Zorn, who finished second on Friday in Bozeman. 

Kaul’s race is the fastest by a Bobcat woman since Christie Schiel set the school record in 2017 (2:06.87). 

Over in the pole vault pit, freshman vaulter Megan Bell continued her late-season surge with huge clearance of 13-08.25 to win on Friday. 

Bell, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, went up and over on her third attempt, pushing her to No. 3 all-time in school history behind only two-time national champion Elouise Rudy (2007) and Maisee Brown (2024). 

Libby Hansen, a junior from Helena, Montana, also cleared a personal-best bar on her home track, getting over 13-02.25 to move up to eighth all-time at Montana State. 

Montana State will take three of the eight best pole vaulters in school history to the conference meet next week, with all three ranking in the top-six in the Big Sky this season (Richards, Bell, Hansen). 

Elsewhere, Taylor Brisendine capped an emotional day with a new personal-best in the triple jump that added on to what was already the third-best mark in school history. 

After walking the stage at graduation in Brick Breeden Fieldhouse in the morning, the native of Kalispell headed to the track and won the triple jump with a leap of 40-08.25–now the second-best mark in the Big Sky this year. 

Brisendine was one of 15 seniors recognized as part of Senior Day festivities following the meet. 

“It’s always a happy day and also a sad day,” Weese said. “We are graduating some people that have contributed so much to our team over the years and have been such an integral part of our team. It is great to see them moving on to the next stage of their life, finishing up graduating and moving on, but we’ll sure miss them here.” 

THE RUNDOWN 

• Easton Hatleberg and Talon Holmquist put on a show in the men’s shot put to finish 1-2. Hatleberg recorded a personal-best of 58-02 to improve on his No. 9 all-time mark in school history, with Holmquist not far behind with a personal-best throw of 57-08.25 

• Destiny Nkeonye won the men’s long jump with a leap of 24-02.25, just three inches off his No. 3 all-time MSU mark. Nkeonye also won the men’s triple jump, with teammate Mathias Mees taking second. 

• Bob Hartley, redshirting this outdoor season, won the men’s pole vault on number of misses over teammate Colby Wilson. Both cleared a bar at 17-04.25 

• Sydney Brewster, the Big Sky Conference record-holder and three-time defending Big Sky Women’s Field Athlete of the Week, won the shot put with a throw of 53-01.75. Teammate Emma Brensdal finished second. 

UP NEXT 

Montana State travels to Sacramento, California, for the 2025 Big Sky Outdoor Track & Field Championships, hosted by Sacramento State at Hornet Stadium beginning Wednesday, May 14, and continuing through Saturday, May 17. 

The Montana State men are the defending Big Sky outdoor champions, while Montana State’s women have finished runner-up at five consecutive conference championship meets. 

#GoCatsGo 

The last time Krista Johnston played water polo she was 10 years old in swimming lessons. Forty years later, looking for a workouonscreensn’t aquafit, she signed up for a Friday morning water polo drop-in at her local Kelowna, B.C., pool, expecting, at that hour, to swim with other people roughly her own age. Instead, she stood poolside on the first day in her teal one-piece with tummy control, the only one with a float belt, watching super-fit, much younger swimmers expertly slinging the ball around. To flee or not to flee?

The dialogue in her head went something like this: Why am I embarrassed? Because I’m 50? Good for me. Because I have a little more around the middle? Well, I’ve had two kids. And then more loudly, insistently, this thought: I deserve to be here.

The women of Gen X (my friends and I included) share her defiance, as they arrive at middle age, their careers established, their families launched, or nearly so.

Our generation, now age 45 to 60, has officially hit the years of colonoscopies and mammograms. And we all know how it’s supposed to go. At the half-century mark, men get a power upgrade and become silver foxes. Women get turkey necks and bingo wings and become irrelevant, invisible and no longer you-know-what-able.

Gen X is having none of it. The mothers I spoke with for this story are starting businesses, taking up skateboarding, travelling with their adult children, dreaming up their next steps.

They are focused on personal agency and joy. They dropped more F-bombs than any batch of interviews I’ve done for a story. They’ve probably danced past midnight more recently than many twentysomethings.

The last thing they are is invisible or irrelevant. “Society wants to put us out to pasture,” says Ms. Johnston. “We’re not accepting that.”

Middle-aged motherhood has been long overdue for a female-friendly reboot, ideally a fearsome, liberated remake that stomps the crap out of what Ms. Johnston calls that “age-shaming baloney.”

This power move is already happening in Hollywood. Gen X directors and actors such as Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett are producing on-screen storylines where middle-aged moms have hot sex with besotted younger men, or team up to mastermind heists and criminal cover-ups.

Add to the movement Michelle Obama, who at 61 gets honorary Gen X status. When her absence from public events prompted rumours of a marriage breakup, the former first lady explained on a podcast in April, “I chose to do what was best for me, not what I had to do, not what I thought other people wanted me to do.”

Even Stacy London, who for years dictated fashion advice on her makeover TV show What Not to Wear, has now hit middle age and menopause with second thoughts about her previously critical assessments of women as frumpy and too flashy. She’s just launched a cleverly marketed mea culpa: a new TV show called Wear Whatever the F You Want.

Points for the pithy title, although this doesn’t make up for “No miniskirts after 35.” Also, quick question: If we’re wearing whatever we want, do we still need instructions?

Because telling Gen X what to do is not going to fly. Based on the conversations I had for this story, the Big Change fuelling all this ferocity is not hormones and empty nests and culture wars and grey hair. It’s the unsung superpower of middle-aged womanhood: You stop giving a damn.

In Langley, B.C., Darla Halyk, 52, has zero damns left to give. (The actual expression she used was much more on brand.) “I’m not the girl walking down the street concerned about what anybody thinks any more.” she says. “I speak my mind clearly if someone says something I disagree with and I don’t fear the repercussions of making them uncomfortable.”

And so, you won’t be surprised to hear that at the pool that day, Ms. Johnston decided no one would put her in a corner. She climbed down the ladder, while everyone else dove in, and chased the ball until she thought her lungs felt like they would explode. “I didn’t want to strut out there, you know, like, ‘I’m ready,’” she says, “But I had to.”

Had to, Ms. Johnston says, because she remembers the way her mom spoke wistfully about missed adventures, and then died at 65, before she felt free enough to do them. Because Ms. Johnston wants to set a more empowered example for her own kids, and for the younger mothers trying to break the rules behind her.

Because why did we all work so freakin’ hard just to slink away from life now?

This expletive-laced remaking of middle age was probably inevitable. What else would you expect from a generation that leans hard on sarcasm and surliness, chafes at dumb rules and knows the world is, sigh, unjust.

And who better to lead this modern new middle-aged motherhood franchise than Generation X, my small yet feisty cohort that has always punched above its weight?

We were the first large group of grade-schoolers who went home to empty houses, and the last teenagers to get up to no good without social-media surveillance. The first female generation to surpass our male peers in educational attainment. (Although we still earned less than them.) The first mothers to get one-year maternity leave, and the second sandwich generation, caring simultaneously for still-growing children and fast-aging parents.

We saw the Tiananmen Square student massacre and the fall of the Berlin Wall happen six months apart, and watched 22-year-old Monica Lewinsky get the blame for the blue dress, so we learned early that borders change and tyrants rise, and that Pity Him would come after #MeToo.

But we also raised our sons to hopefully understand consent in a way our own dates sometimes didn’t. We warned our daughters not to take abortion rights for granted. And we took them both to the therapy we never got.

We perfected motherhood hacks well before TikTok glamourized them. One mom I know simmered Bulls-Eye Barbecue Sauce on the stove for years to home-cooking acclaim. (In case you’re interested, she also cleverly stocks her car with the gum flavour nobody in her family likes so she’s never disappointed by an empty pack.)

Doing it all still broke many of us early. But there was a silver lining. At daycare, the kids with mismatched socks and single mittens were friendship beacons for frazzled moms barely holding it together and the resulting wine-soaked girls’ nights were training for seizing our own identities in mid-life.

But this isn’t a fairy tale: Getting old also sucks. You ache in new places. Your girlfriends get cancer. Marriages unravel. Parents die. The kids leave. Illness derails your plans.

And more than you like to admit, you grieve for your prettier self.

“I didn’t think I would feel so sad about getting old,” says Ms. Halyk. “I didn’t think I was that vain. I have never been a high-fashion, wear-a-lot-of-makeup lady.” She hates that “a little bit of grey hair” makes her feel insecure. Some days, she catches her eyes in the mirror, unprepared for the reflection. “Like two days ago, I looked 10 years younger.”

Having hit middle age with independence and financial means, and still just enough insecurity, Gen X women have become a lucrative demographic. Menopause has gone mainstream, selling books and lux lubricants. From a new company started by Gen X actor Naomi Watts, there’s the Vag of Honor intimate moisture gel and the Oh My Glide play oil, a top seller, according to the website. Unfortunately, much like easy access to consistent medical care for a health issue guaranteed to affect half the population, neither are available in Canada.

Meanwhile, according to social media, a middle-aged woman’s wish list is reduced to miracle winkle cream, wall Pilates, incontinence underwear and pelvic floor therapy. That last one would feel like progress, if it wasn’t immediately followed by an ad of a plastic surgeon drawing on a woman’s face to mark the parts he would fix. (Only the neck, chin, cheeks, eyes, nose and forehead.)

“Pretending that it doesn’t ever bother us that our necks are getting saggy isn’t helpful,” says Krista O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui, a 53-year-old mom and wellness coach in Edson, Alta., who leads an online mentoring community for middle-aged women. At the same time, “If you stop spending 80 per cent of your waking hours hating your body, trying to change our body, trying to find clothes to make your body look a different way, you’ve got a lot of space now to do your creative work.”

Life also has a way of minimizing the smaller problems – and clarifying our priorities -by burdening us with larger loss.

Ms. Halyk, for example, abandoned her writing career after receiving death threats for telling a story about a sexual assault she experienced as a young woman. “You know, we all go through stuff,” she says. “You go though it, and you heal.”

Ms. O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui lost her 23-year-old son to suicide in 2019. In therapy, she worked hard on self-compassion, and how to carry a terrible grief that will be with her forever. “It was not a pretty journey,” she says. Feeling joy again was difficult and emotional work. She moved through it with the help of professional mental health care and women who gave her space to be honest – the kind of collective embrace, she says, we need to foster more in society.

Oorbee Roy, a Toronto mom who took up skateboarding in her 40s and is now known around the internet as Aunty Skates, has an inherited condition that means she could have a heart attack at any time. “I’m hyper aware of the fact that these are good years,“ and she refuses to waste them.

Early this year, Ms. Roy, 50, announced to her husband she would not be folding the laundry any more. “And he’s like, ‘But that‘s adulting,’” she recalls. She stood her ground: The clothes come out of the dryer, get dumped in a basket and she doesn’t care. “I don’t want to do all this mundane stuff any more.” Two weeks ago, however, she came home from visiting her mother, and her folded clothes had also been put away. “That,” she says, “was like foreplay.”

A laundry strike may not be world-changing, but Ms. O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui sees this middle-aged tension as our true selves saying, “Stop. No more devaluing myself, no more putting myself last, no more performing.“

This “reimagining of how we move through the world” can be messy, she says. Sometimes “you need to scream and get that rage out of your body.” (Insert F-bomb where appropriate.)

When I asked Gen X women for their best sources of perspective and meaning, they looked in two directions – their parents aging ahead of them, and their kids coming up behind. “I think we’re very lucky to be Gen X,” Ms. Halyk told me. “We’ve gotten to see history and the future, and really live in the line between them.”

From that vantage point, you see what it‘s like to get older, for better and worse. Maybe you start lifting weights, not so much to lose weight, but to dodge your mom‘s knee surgery at 70. Or you invest in friends who will remind you of past adventures when your memory fades like your father‘s.

With your kids, there’s common music and culture – a shortcut to closeness. You’ve likely been getting IT support from them for years already – why stop listening now?

Gen X moms are quick to say yes – to concerts with their kids, or pub nights with their millennial co-workers. When Ms. Halyk‘s daughter wanted to go with her to Disneyland for her 21st birthday, she made it happen, and even went on her most terrifying ride, the Ferris wheel. At work, younger colleagues have taught Ms. Johnston about bubble tea and the shows they liked, and energized her natural curiosity. “Sometimes, I would forget that I was more than twice their age.” And at water polo, the players were generous and welcoming; she was soon joining them for post-scrimmage conversation in the hot tub.

Ms. O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui says her daughters, both in their 20s, are a primary motivator for how she chooses to live. “I want something better for them, or at least, I want to model a brave way of being in the world.”

For Ms. Johnston, a more empathetic understanding of her mother also looms large in her decisions today. She sees now that her mom was forced to be the serious parent because of her fun-loving father, yet always pushed her daughters to be independent and adventurous. At 58, her mom went back to school, to upgrade her skills, an act of bravery her then 28-year-old daughter didn’t fully appreciate. And Ms. Johnston now clearly recognizes a yearning for what might have been, when her mom listened to accounts of her children’s travels.

She thinks of this when she sticks with water polo, when she proposes renting out the house and working on a sheep farm in Scotland, and realizes she would go, in a heartbeat, except her husband isn’t keen, and she still feels selfish spending money to chase her own desires.

“I’m not as brave as I think I am, or want to be,” Ms. Johnston says. And yet, this is now or never time. “Do I take a chance? Do you go out on a limb? Do I want to just be accepting things that I’m not okay with until I die?”

Her fear is that she’ll get to her mom‘s age, with the same regrets. “That definitely lights a huge fire under me.” Her mother‘s story also reminds her how abruptly that fire can go out. “I’ve survived. I’ve seen. I’ve done,” she says. “I’m lucky I’m here.”

Every Halloween, Ms. Roy and husband host a rager in their home. They hire two bartenders, and glow-in the dark Jello syringes are the custom cocktail. They invite all the neighbours so no one calls the police. There’s dancing and karaoke, until the guests are sent home at 2 a.m. A couple of years ago, a younger mom in attendance found Ms. Roy, then dressed as the creepy, crooked-necked ghost from The Haunting of Hill House, and thanked her, proving it‘s possible to still have fun as an adult.

And yet, for years Ms. Roy sat on the sidelines, while her husband and children whizzed around the skateboard park, talking herself out of having fun by joining them. She told herself: “I won’t be very good. It‘s too late for me. I’m going to hurt myself. People will laugh at me.”

And then, at 43, she decided she wanted to be a participant in, not a witness to, her family’s life. The joy she felt from that first clumsy ride was unexpected. She thought, “I want more of this in my life,” And life, she realized, was a lot like skateboarding – you fall a lot, you think about what you did wrong, you go again. If you’re lucky, you eventually land the trick. “But it‘s really about the journey.”

Ms. Halyk, who handles accounts for a tax services company, is currently launching her own business, Pawsh Trail Co., a pet product line designed to help woman walk and care more easily for their large dogs

“I just see myself in my power, more than ever,” Ms. Halyk says. “You’re not strapped to the toddler or even the soccer practices. You have more you.”

More room, for “what next?” as Ms.O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui likes to say.

On that front, Ms. Roy is starting an Aunty Skates podcast. Ms. Halyk dreams of buying an acreage with her kids, and raising chickens and canning her own tomatoes. Ms. Johnston injured her rotator cuff during water-polo drills; she plans to return in September, but has joined a competitive dragon boat team in the meantime.

All this example-setting and boundary-moving, personal and public, is important: Middle age can be a grim and lonely place, the time of life with the highest suicide rates for women.

That‘s why women need to come together and share, says Ms. O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui, for their own benefit, but also so that their example trickles down. She notes that her 25-year-old daughter is following hormone specialists and pelvic floor therapists on Instagram. Her middle age has already shifted, just like Gen X evolved from the activism of their mothers’ generation.

“The more that we all practise a new way of being, we’re just sort of pinging off each other,” says Ms. O‘Reilly-Davi-Digui. “We’re creating a new cultural narrative.

We might wonder why we waited so long. Considering her own reasons, Michelle Obama suggested that women too often worry about disappointing people. “I could have made a lot of these decisions years ago, but I didn’t give myself that freedom.”

Giving yourself the freedom to choose is but one lesson of Gen X aging that‘s also a lifelong happiness practice. Among the others: Mind the hour, and be grateful for the day; learn from the people you value, young and old; be bold and brave and silly as often as you can.

And then there’s this one, from which all of those others flow:

On a recent evening, I stood in a kitchen with a group of Gen X women. One mom, an accountant, described once begging the local baker to make three lasagnas in her own casserole dishes so she could pass them off as home made at the school bake sale – prompting laughter, à la “we’ve all been there.”

But in the pause that followed, a second mom, who had stayed home with her kids and whose talents I have long admired, quietly spoke up: She’d also felt judged, by the working-outside-the home moms, for bringing in the lasagna she supposedly “had so much free time” to cook herself. The moment landed hard: Mothers, of every age, get enough blame for being too warm, too cold, too absent, too present. Why do we add to it?

“We are all feeling the same way, and have come through so much,” says Ms. Halyk. “We need to be gracious with each other and ourselves.” If Gen X, while rebranding middle-aged motherhood, passes down any lesson, may it be this one.

Nikolov joins his older brother Alex Nikolov as just the second player in AVCA history to win both the AVCA Newcomer of the Year and National Collegiate Player of the Year awards in the same season. Making the honor even more unique, the Nikolov brothers are the only sibling pair in AVCA history to win National Player of the Year.

Nikolov becomes the eighth Long Beach State Men’s Volleyball player to earn National Player of the Year honors as he is now part of an elite club that features Long Beach legends Brent Hilliard (1992), Tyler Hildebrand (2006), Paul Lotman (2008), Taylor Crabb (2013), TJ DeFalco (2017, 2019), Josh Tuaniga (2018), and Alex Nikolov (2022).

In a sensational rookie campaign, Nikolov has collected numerous honors and has broken several records. The 6-foot-10 setter out of Sofia, Bulgaria has totaled 97 aces this season to set the Long Beach State program and Big West single-season records. He is just three service aces shy of tying the NCAA single-season aces record. His 97 aces shattered the previous LBSU record set 17 years ago by Paul Lotman (60 in 2008) by nearly 40. In just one season, Nikolov ranks ninth in Long Beach State career records. Additionally, his 0.94 service aces per set leads the nation.

With what is believed to be the fastest recorded serve in NCAA history, Nikolov recorded a career-high eight aces to tie for second in the LBSU single-match record book. That mark is also a new Walter Pyramid single-match record and is good for seventh in the NCAA Record Book for service aces in a five-set match. Additionally, he has led the Beach to 227 aces this year as the 2025 team set a new program record by topping the 2008 squad that had 210 aces in a single-season.

This year, Nikolov has done an excellent job leading Long Beach State to a nation-leading .395 team hitting percentage, which currently ranks third all-time in the NCAA, coming in behind only the 2019 Hawaii squad (.435) and the 2019 LBSU team (.414).

Nikolov has contributed on all sides of the ball with 10.00 assists per set which is good for 14th in the nation and third in The Big West. He leads the Beach with 1.51 digs per set and ranks in the Top 10 in the conference. With 0.76 blocks per set, Nikolov is second on the team and 11th in The Big West. He also chips in on the offensive attack averaging 1.56 kills per set this year.

The AVCA National Collegiate Player of the Year award adds to his already impressive resume that includes AVCA Newcomer of the Year, AVCA All-America First Team, Big West Player of the Year, Big West Freshman of the Year, All-Big West First Team selection, and All-Big West Freshman Team. Earlier this season, Nikolov won The Big West Setter of the Week award three times and The Big West Freshman of the Week honor on seven separate occasions.

Winning the National Player of the Year award as a freshman puts Nikolov in elite company across NCAA Division I athletics. He now joins the short list of Kevin Durant (2007), Anthony Davis (2012), Johnny Manziel (2012), Jameis Winston (2013), Zion Williamson (2019), Paige Bueckers (2021), and Alex Nikolov (2022).

 

PITMAN, NJ — #5 Rowan captured three major awards by the New Jersey Athletic Conference in its year-end awards and All-Conference selections in men’s outdoor track & field as the Profs had 28 student-athletes earn honors.

Jason Agyemang was named the NJAC Thomas M. Gerrity Most Outstanding Athlete while Jamir Brown was chosen the NJAC Rookie of the Year. Head coach Dustin Dimit and his staff were honored with the Bill Fritz Coaching Staff of the Year by their peers.

All-NJAC honors were determined by finish at the recent NJAC Outdoor Track & Field Championship and major awards were voted on by the league’s nine head coaches.

Agyemang swept the hurdles over the weekend, hitting personal bests and NCAA Division III top-10 times in both the 110 and 400 hurdles events. He ran the second-fastest 110 hurdles time in NCAA Division III this season with a time of 13.74 seconds. That ranks as the third-fastest all-time in D3 history. Agyemang, who was a Week 6 NJAC Track Athlete of the Week, clocked in at of 52.69 seconds in the 400 hurdles to rank as the sixth-fastest in D3 this year.

Brown adds to the sweeps, taking home the outdoor Rookie of the Year honor to add to his indoor top rookie honor. The freshman hurdles sensation clocked a 13.60 in the 110 hurdles preliminary, setting a new NCAA D3 record, conference meet record, and Rowan program record. That time was also the best by a freshman among all NCAA divisions this year. He came in under the old NJAC championship meet record of 13.64 that stood for nearly 25 years, set by Glassboro State’s Garry Moore in 1981. In addition to his top D3 time in the 110 hurdles, he also currently owns the #11 time in the 400 hurdles.
 
Dimit and his staff are named the Bill Fritz Coaching Staff of the Year for the tenth consecutive season as he guided Rowan to its tenth straight outdoor title. The 2025 Profs garnered 10 event wins, nine second-place finishes, and 10 third-place finishes en route to 313 points, which included four podium sweeps. They guided two major award winners in Most Outstanding Athlete Jason Agyemang and Rookie of the Year Jamir Brown, coaching the duo to top all-time D3 times in the 110 hurdles.

Also claiming first-team honors were Joshua Cason (5000 meters), Matthew Conway (10,000 meters), Caleb Clevenger (3000 meter steeplechase), Jamile Gantt (High Jump), Tyler Raimondi (Pole Vault), and Damitrius Hester (Javelin). The 4×100 relay of Dominic George, Robert McKinney, Shamar Love, and Evan Corcoran and the 4×400 relay of Lowrentzky Ambroise, Nana Agyemang, Samael Milevoix, and Luke Halbruner also earned a first-team nod.

Second-team accolades went to Love (100 meters, 200 meters), N. Agyemang (Long Jump), James Coleman (400 meters), Miles Voenell (10,000 meters), Kwaku Nkrumah (110 meter hurdles), Arrington Rhym (High Jump), Max Owens (Pole Vault), and Josh Caudill (Shot)

McKinney (100 meters, 200 meters), Halbruner (400 meters), Cameron DiTroia (10,000 meters), Anaias Hughes (110 meter hurdles), Samuel Agbessi (400 meter hurdles), Noah Wampole (High Jump), Jason Tomaino (Pole Vault), Ian Bain (Discus), and Val Augustin (Decathlon) all scored spots on honorable mention list.

Here is a breakdown of the awards:
Agbessi – HM (400 meter hurdles)
J. Agyemang – 1st (110 meter hurdles), 1st (400 meter hurdles)
N. Agyemang – 1st (4×400 relay), 2nd (Long Jump)
Ambroise – 1st (4×400 relay)
Augustin – HM (Decathlon)
Bain – HM (Discus)
Cason – 1st (5000 meters)
Caudill – 2nd (Shot)
Clevenger – 1st (3000 meter steeplechase)
Coleman – 2nd (400 meters)
Conway – 1st (10,000 meters)
Corcoran – 1st (4×100 relay)
DiTroia – HM (10,000 meters)
Gantt – 1st (High Jump)
George – 1st (4×100 relay)
Halbruner – 1st (4×400 relay), HM (400 meters)
Hester – 1st (Javelin)
Hughes – HM (110 meter hurdles)
Love – 1st (4×100 relay), 2nd (100 meters), 2nd (200 meters)
McKinney – 1st (4×100 relay), HM (100 meters), HM (200 meters)
Milevoix – 1st (4×400 relay)
Nkrumah – 2nd (110 meter hurdles)
Owens – 2nd (Pole Vault)
Raimondi – 1st (Pole Vault)
Rhym – 2nd (High Jump)
Tomaino – HM (Pole Vault)
Voenell – 2nd (10,000 meters)
Wampole – HM (High Jump)

Rowan will head to the Widener Final Qualifier meet on Monday, May 12th before selections to the Division III Outdoor Championships, which get underway on May 22nd in Geneva, Ohio.

“I am incredibly proud of Georgi,” said Long Beach State Head Coach Alan Knipe. “He has done a great job in any role we have thrown his way and is an incredible teammate. He is very deliberate in his attention to detail in all areas of his life. This award showcases our program’s motto, ‘Expect greatness in every area of your life.’ A huge shout out goes to Sandra Shirley, the Director of the Bickerstaff Academic Center, and her amazing staff for all of their outstanding work with our student-athletes.”

Academically, Binev is a junior transfer from Long Beach City College carries a perfect 4.0 grade point average as a Kinesiology Exercise Science major at Long Beach State University.

Athletically, Binev is a sophomore outside hitter from Varna, Bulgaria. This season, the 6-foot-4 Binev has been an essential part of the top-ranked Beach’s success. The versatile Binev has come off the bench in 67 sets this season and has done an excellent job in every aspect of the game, specifically from the serving line where he has helped LBSU set a new single-season program record of 227 aces.

The Elite 90 award honors the exceptional achievements of student-athletes. This prestigious accolade is given to those who have not only excelled at a national championship level in their sport, but have also achieved the highest academic standards among their peers. The Elite 90 is proudly awarded to the student-athlete with the highest cumulative GPA at the finals site for each of the NCAA’s 90 championships.

Binev becomes the first Long Beach State Men’s Volleyball student-athlete to win the Elite 90 award and the second LBSU student-athlete in program history. He joins Former Long Beach State Beach Volleyball player Kobi Pekich who took home the award in 2017.

 

INDIANOLA, Iowa– The No. 21 Wartburg women’s track and field team is in first place at the American Rivers Conference outdoor track and field championships with 89 points after Friday’s events.
 
Team Standings:
1            Wartburg                        89
2            Loras                              56
3            Dubuque                        41
4            Central                           39
5            Nebraska Wesleyan      38
6            Simpson                        37
7            Luther                             8
8            Buena Vista                    3
9            Coe                                 1

 

Event Wins:

Heptathlon

1            Caitlin Benesh                           4286 points

4x800m

1            Wartburg                                      9:25.90 (H. Meyer, E. Johnson, H. Ramsey, I. Skay)

 

All-Conference Finishers:

3000m Steeplechase

2            Ellie Meyer                                   10:40.47

3            Maddie Merna                              11:16.43

10000m

2            Ava Vance                                    38:47.06

Heptathlon

3            Brooke Shafer                            4110 points    

High Jump

3            Grace Braden                             1.55m 5-01.00

Long Jump

3            Olivia Tollari                                5.49m 18-00.25

Discus

3            Abby Veld                                    44.63m 146-05

 

Qualified for Tomorrow’s Finals:

400m Hurdles

1            Sophia Stahle                             1:02.86

3            Ryann Decker                             1:03.54

4            Grace Braden                             1:05.97

400m

1            JoJo Tyynismaa                          56.15

7            Natalie Bork                                58.61

100m Hurdles

1            Grace Braden                             14.50

3            Ryann Decker                             15.13

5            Sophia Stahle                             15.39

8            Caitlin Benesh                            15.79

800m

2            Haley Meyer                              2:14.74

4            Nadia Bowden                           2:15.46

6            Hannah Ramsey                       2:17.76

200m

2            JoJo Tyynismaa                          24.73

7            Addison Parker                           25.38

100m

8            Addison Parker                            12.64

 

Notes:

• This is the ninth title in the 4x800m in program history
• This is the third title in the heptathlon in program history
• This is Benesh’s first career outdoor conference title
• At press time, Tyynismaa’s prelim 400m time stands 30^th on the TFRRS list for this season
• Benesh’s heptathlon score ranks sixth on the program’s top 10 list
• Shafer’s heptathlon score ranks eighth on the program’s top 10 list
• Merna’s 3000m steeplechase time ranks eighth on the program’s top 10 list

Up Next

Events resume at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow in Indianola.