From Washington University Athletics
The Washington University in St. Louis women's indoor track & field team won two event national championships to finish third in the team standings at the 2016 NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championships. The WashU men finished ninth overall to mark the first time in school history that both teams finished in the top-10.
Junior Daisy Ogede became just the fourth individual in WashU women's track & field history to win an indoor national title. She is the first female sprinter in school history to accomplish the feat, joining Emily Richard (1998 – 5,000), Morgen Leonard-Fleckman (2008 – pole vault) and Lucy Cheadle (2015 – 5,000) as the four women's indoor national champions in program history.
Racing in the first heat of the women's 200 final, Ogede sprinted to a school-record time of 24.80 seconds to win her heat by nearly two-tenths of a second. That ended up being the difference between first and second in the race as the winner of heat two finished third overall in 25.03. Ogede's time bettered her own previous school record of 24.83 set at the University Athletic Association (UAA) Championships two weeks ago.
Ogede then teamed with juniors Rebecca Ridderhoff and Kelli Hancock and senior Emily Warner to win the 1,600 relay in 3:49.80. After running neck-and-neck with Illinois Wesleyan University through the first 800, Ogede and Warner pulled away as the Bears won the race by more than two seconds. They are the first women's relay team in school history to a national title.
Those two national titles helped the Bears score 31 team points to finish third in the team standings for the third time in school history. The men's team finished with 18 points, the highest total in school history, to place ninth in the team standings. It was the second top-10 finish in program history.
After helping the men's distance medley relay win the national title Friday, junior Deko Ricketts raced to a runner-up finish in the men's 800 Saturday. He clocked a time of 1:53.67, edging Cyrus Mason of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse by .004 for second in the event. It was Ricketts' first individual indoor All-America finish of his career.
Sophomore Annalise Wagner also picked up her second All-America honor of the weekend. She finished eighth in the women's 800 with a time of 2:17.23 after racing on WashU's fifth-place distance medley relay Friday night.
Senior Alex Arteaga finished the heptathlon for the WashU men Saturday. He placed 12th overall with a score of 4,585 after tying for second in the pole vault with a clearance of 4.35 meters during day two of the heptathlon.