The Cal Poly track and field teams won a combined 20 of 38 events against UC Santa Barbara at home on Saturday, wrapping up the regular season schedule with a 110-88 win for the men’s side and a 104-98 loss for the women’s side.
Cal Poly men’s team
The Mustangs started off the day with a second-, third- and fourth-place finish in the 300 meter steeplechase and second place in the 4 x 100 meter relay. Senior Garrett Migliozzi took the first win for the men’s side in the 1500 meter with a time of 3:48.79. That started a run of wins for the men: senior Ben Hartinger took the 110 meter hurdles win in 14.53 seconds with two more Mustangs close behind and junior Liam Martinez won the 400 meter in 48.82 seconds.
After a couple of wins by UC Santa Barbara, the Cal Poly men closed out the track events with four straight victories: freshman Clayton Mackay in the 400 meter hurdles (54.14), senior Tyler Rohde in the 200 meter (21.77), junior Swarnjit Boyal in the 3000 meter (8:36.32) and the 4 x 400 meter relay team of Martinez, Mackay, sophomore Connor Crowe and freshman Thomas Heib (3:19.43).
In the field events, the Mustangs swept the high jump as sophomore Vince Porter took first place with a mark of two meters, ahead of freshman Bailey Thayer in second at 1.95 meters and senior Danny Yeager in third at 1.9 meters. Junior Brad Beekman won the pole vault at 4.97 meters and senior Jirael Hipol took the long jump at 6.57 meters.
Senior Arnold Sambel narrowly won the discus with a mark of 52.39 meters, just 0.08 meters ahead of UC Santa Barbara’s Kordell Hampton. Sambel also won the shot put at 17.54 meters to wrap up the field events for the Cal Poly men’s side.
With a 12-7 advantage in victories (worth five points each), the Mustangs filled out the top three spots in each event well enough to take the victory over the visiting Gauchos.
Cal Poly women’s team
The Mustangs started the day strong and won two of the first three events: the 4 x 100 meter relay (47.04) and sophomore Peyton Bilo won the 1500 meter in 4:27.54. From there, Cal Poly managed just two other wins: junior Daijah Joe-Smith in the 100 meter (11.89) and senior Kylie Nishisaka in the 3000 meter (10:08.02).
Cal Poly managed to win half the field events, but it was not enough for the team to win the head-to-head matchup. Freshman Abi Iriafen won the triple jump with a mark of 12.29 meters, the eighth-best in school history and in the top 50 nationally. Sophomore Allison Scranton won the discus at 43.43 meters, just 0.01 meters or half an inch better than UC Santa Barbara’s Kayla Thayer and senior Jessica Escalante won the javelin throw with a mark of 38.82 meters. Junior Kiely Osby wrapped up the women’s events with a win in the shot put at 13.93 meters.
The decathletes and heptathletes for each side will be in Fullerton next weekend for the Big West Multi-Event Championships before the full conference championships at Titan Track & Field Complex May 12 and 13.