The No. 6 K-State women’s track and field team came within seven points of bringing home a Big 12 Indoor Championship this past weekend in Ames, Iowa. Instead, they made history with a silver medal as a team – the highest finish in school history – and two individual first-place finishes.
The men’s team, meanwhile, finished in ninth place with 43 points, 97 points behind the Texas Longhorns, who swept both the men’s and women’s championships.
In the women’s high jump event, the Wildcats swept the top three spots, with sophomore Kim Williamson winning her first-ever Big 12 title. Junior Akela Jones and senior Alyx Treasure, who each cleared 1.84 meters, rounded out the event finishing second and third, respectively.
Williamson secured high jump by narrowly edging out Jones and Treasure by .03 meters with a personal-best 1.87 meter jump.
Also securing her first Big 12 Championship was junior thrower Dani Winters, who captured the gold medal by less than a meter. She has now won the event in three-straight meets and four meets overall on the indoor season.
Winters finished sixth in the same event at the indoor championships a season ago. This time around, she beat her mark by 1.25 meters, which is just over a 4-foot improvement.
The women also saw multiple athletes break school records at the meet. Freshman sprinter A’Keyla Mitchell and junior sprinter Sonia Gaskin broke records in the 200-meter and 600-yard events, respectively.
Jones also broke the school record in the 60-meter hurdle event. She was honored by the conference at the conclusion of the meet as the highest-point scorer with 24 points.
For the men, freshman NaTron Gipson shined with a second-place finish in the high jump event. Gipson nearly upset the No. 1 high jumper in the country, Texas Tech Senior Jacorian Duffield.
Gipson and Duffield were the only two competitors to make it past the 2.22 meter mark before faulting three times at 2.25 meters. Gipson was relegated to second place because of his single fault in the 2.22 meter height, with Duffield jumping the height without a single fault.
