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YSU out-jumps expectations on first day of HL championships
Jump crew exceeds hopes in HL tourney
By Brian Dzenis
YOUNGSTOWN
With a few timely leaps, Youngstown State’s track team produced some unexpected points.
The Penguins literally out-jumped its projections on Saturday in the first day of the Horizon League Indoor Championships at the WATTS, giving the men’s side the lead and the women not far behind. The men have 52 points with a four-point lead on Milwaukee and the women are two points back of Oakland with 57.
Sophomore Tim Holzapfel got the team going early in the tournament with three new personal bests, including a League record.
“That was the highlight of the day. He’s been a personal-best machine,” coach Brian Gorby said. “He’s been injured and we’ve been resting him, but he came through. He has the ability to score around 25-30 points.”
The German import is on pace to smash the Horizon League’s record point totals and take home his second title in the heptathlon. He has 3,060 after Day one.
He won the 60m leg with a time of 7.24 seconds. His first PR came in the long jump with a first-place leap of 6.97m and followed up with a another personal best in the shot put with a third-place throw of 11.81m. In the high jump leg, he set a new League mark with a jump of 2.06m — making him the only competitor to clear 2m.
“The high jump was almost perfect,” Holzapfel said. “My ankle was hurting and I think I twisted it during the long jump. I had to be careful.”
Despite the injury, he still managed to get fifth in the long jump without completing all of his jumps and will race in today’s 60m hurdles final alongside teammates Chad Zallow and Caleb Lloyd by taking fourth in the preliminary race.
An import out of M ∂ssingen, Germany and a fan of the Bundesliga’s Borussia Dortmund, Holzapfel won the heptathlon last year with a record score of 5,276 points. He’ll participate in the pole vault, 1,000m and the 60m hurdles today and has a good outlook for today.
“I think nobody likes the 1,000. It’s hard, long and everyone is tired in the last event,” Holzapfel said. “I like the jumping events — the pole vault, high jump and the hurdles.”
Judging from Saturday’s results, Gorby also likes the jumping events.
“It was a tremendous effort from our jump crew. [Assistant coach Katrina Brumfield] did a great job with the women’s long jump. We figured we’d get two points and then Jessica Stever gets second and Chandler Killins got fifth,” Gorby said. “On the men’s side, Daiquain Watson is a freshman projected to be fifth and he ended up winning it.”
Stever was projected to be out of the top three in both the pentathlon and the long jump, but took third in both events. She was buoyed by a first-place performance PR in the long jump leg with a leap of 5.64m.
Zallow breezed through his three preliminary races — the 60m, the 60m hurdles and the 200m — with three first-place finishes. In the 60m, he broke his own record and the League’s record with a run of 6.75 seconds.
Senior thrower Jaynee Corbett delivered 10 points for the Penguins by winning the weight throw by a healthy margin. Her throw of 18.34m was almost 2m ahead of the runner up, Oakland’s Gabriell Cyriax.
“It would have been nice to PR, but this is the most consistent weight meet I’ve had with all my throws in the high 17s and low 18s, so I can’t be too unhappy with it,” Corbett said.