Falcons Lead Conference Outdoor Championship After Three Days
5/18/2001 12:00:00 AM | Track and Field Managers
May 18, 2001
SAN DIEGO, CA--Air Force's Shane Rogers was not going to be denied his place in Air Force track history while Anthony Parks is still writing his as both came up with titles at the Mountain West Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships at San Diego State's "track on a roof."
Rogers, a senior, is use to pressure. He's going to graduate in two weeks, get married in a month and he came into the meet as the defending champion in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. He went out and ran 8:59.44 to win the race by more than three seconds over Utah's B.J. Christenson.
Parks, who also plays football, captured the title in the long jump by improving on his career best by nine inches. Parks jumped 24-feet, 1-inch to walk away with the title. That ranks as the second best jump in school history.
The two individual titles helped the Falcons tally 79 points for the lead in this championship. Colorado State is in second place with 57 points followed by BYU (41), New Mexico (22), Wyoming (17) and Utah.
"Rogers goes down in the books as one of the most decorated distance runners in school history, and that includes a long line of super distance runners. Two conference titles, he is going to his third NCAA championship, and will be a two-time academic all-american," said head coach Ralph Lindeman. "It doesn't get any better than that.
"There were only two people in the stadium that thought Anthony Parks was going to win in the long jump--Anthony and myself," said Lindeman. "He wasn't jumping well in the early rounds. I never lost faith in him and more importantly he never lost his confidence."
Lindeman said the task at hand now is to maintain the momentum that has been built up the first three days of the meet.
"I don't think it is reasonable to expect that we can beat BYU, which has won conference titles nine years in a row. But I do think it is reasonable for us to finish second and come the closest to the Cougars than any team has done in recent history," Lindeman said.
Lindeman said there were so many positives in the competition on Friday that it would be unfair to single out any one of them. However, he said the second and fourth place finish in the javelin by Tim Fritz and Brian Willis were exceptional.
Also, Nick Bromberek's third place finish in the long jump gave the Falcons 20 points. Shawn Johnson's fourth-place finish in the discus and Joe Monaco's fourth-place finish in the 10,000-meters received praise from Lindeman.
In the women's competition, Brigham Young, the perennial winner, holds first place with 85 points. The Falcons are in eight place with six points.
The meet concludes Saturday on the Aztecs state-of-the-art track located on the roof of a campus parking garage.
