Track and field to open Pac-12 Championships with Multis
The Arizona State University track and field teams will send five student-athletes to compete in the Pac-12 Combined Event Championships on Saturday and Sunday at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore.
The event this weekend will feature the heptathlon and decathlon portion of the Pac-12 Championships set to take place next weekend also in Eugene. Points from this weekend will be added to the team scores at next week’s competition. This will mark the inaugural track and field championship with the Pac-12’s new additions of Colorado and Utah.
The No. 3 ASU men will enter three student-athletes in the competition while the No. 11 women’s team will field two. Seniors Jamie Sandys and Austin Prince will join junior Jeremy Marcinko on the men’s side while juniors Keia Pinnick and Christabel Nettey will represent the women.
Pinnick will enter the weekend ranked seventh in the nation in the heptathlon and as the current top-ranked member in the Pac-12 Conference, though NCAA Indoor Pentathlon Champion Brianne Theisen of Oregon has yet to compete in a heptathlon this season.
Nettey will also be competing in her first heptathlon of the season, though she has posted the No. 7 best score all-time in the event for ASU despite her sporadic involvement.
Sandys and Prince will be competing in their final Pac-12 Championships in Maroon and Gold. Sandys took fifth at the Pac-12 Championships in 2010 while Prince was eighth in 2011. Marcinko just missed a point-scoring finish last year, taking ninth in this event in Tucson, Ariz. With the men very much in the thick of earning just their second Pac-12 team title, this weekend will offer the team plenty of opportunities to get a bit of an edge heading into the main event next weekend.
Events are slated to begin on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. PST with the men’s 110-meter hurdles with the women’s high hurdles to follow at 11:45 a.m. and the remainder of the events continuing over the course of the day and into Sunday. For more information visit the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships site.