WACO, Texas – If improvement in the second year under Martin Smith goes as well as his first, there may be more OU teams than baseball and softball competing for Big 12 titles in the month of May.
In what should have been a down year for the Sooners, the men's and women's teams overachieved Sunday at the Big 12 Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
Cale Drumright and Scott Martin won individual event titles as the men's team finished fifth, its best result since 1998, with 74 points, five behind third place. It was also the first time since 1998 that the OU men had two individual event champions.
The women's team, without Big 12 indoor mile champion Jessica Eldridge and points scorers Catherine Odell and Toni Smith, tied for 10th.
Both standings were a dramatic improvement over last year when the men's team placed 10th and the women were dead last.
Drumright dominated the men's javelin throw, winning with a personal best of 228 feet, 6 inches (69.64 meters) and besting second-place Jamie Robinson of Texas Tech by nearly nine feet.
The Ottawa, Kan., native became just the third Sooner to win a conference championship in the javelin and first since Nathan Anderson at the 1936 Big Six Championships.
Martin battled teammate and fellow All-American Chip Heuser in the men's pole vault. Martin scored the victory as the only athlete to clear 17-5.50 (5.32). Heuser was second at 17-0.75 (5.20).
Jason Stanley and Dermillo Wise grabbed second and third, respectively, in the 110-meter high hurdles. Stanley's 13.79-second run was a personal record and the best run by a Sooner in over a decade.
Tony Francis added to the team score with an eighth-place run.
Wise also took sixth (51.93) in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles.
Yolanda Goff finished third in the women's 100-meter dash, clocking in at 11.50. Leslie Cole was seventh in 11.69.
Cole placed sixth in the 200-meter dash, sprinting the distance in 24.02.
Marcus Pugh earned fourth (10.47) in the men's 100-meter dash and fifth in the 200 (21.13
Kevin Bookout placed third in the shot put, throwing a season best 61-3.00 (18.67).
Tydree Lewis was third in the triple jump with a bound of 50-5.25 (15.37).
Freshman high jumper Katherine Johnson leaped to a fourth-place result, clearing 5-8.75 (1.75).
Freshman Amy Backel, who placed sixth in the heptathlon Saturday, added to the women's total with a seventh-place result in the javelin throw. Backel threw a personal best 147-05 (44.93), fifth-best all-time by a Sooner.
The Sooners have the week off before traveling to Austin, Texas, for the NCAA Midwest Regional. An OU record 30 combined men\'s and women\'s entries qualified for the meet which begins Friday, May 26.