Kevin Jorgensen, Zach Boyd-Helm, Eric Avila and Jonz Olander celebrate their second NAIA title Saturday.
GENEVA, Ohio – The Southern Oregon University men's distance medley relay team really only had its own national record to race against by the end of its run Saturday at the NAIA Indooor Track & Field Championships.
Winning back-to-back titles wasn't a problem. The Raiders were nearly a full 10 seconds better than their competition in the final at the SPIRE Institute, making Zach Boyd-Helm, Jonz Olander, Kevin Jorgensen and Eric Avila runaway champions again.
And although there was some doubt early, a roaring finish helped them set another new NAIA standard as they tackled 4,000 combined meters in 9:47.60 – bumping their mark of 9:48.16 set on the same track a year earlier.
They didn't do it without encountering a scare. According to head coach Grier Gatlin, Boyd-Helm was tripped up just before completing his 1,200-meter portion and handing off to Olander for 400.
"We had a moment with our hearts in our throats but (Boyd-Helm) stayed upright and Olander gave us a big gap on the other teams," Gatlin said. "Jorgensen [for 800 meters] and Avila [for 1,600] widened it even further. It was really great to watch."
Oklahoma City came in second in 9:57.49, and Concordia (Ore.) was third in 9:57.90. The former had the best time in Thursday's preliminaries, 9:58.81, but the Raiders improved on their time by about 12 seconds and no one else got better by more than three seconds.
SOU's mark is the 36th-best that's been recorded at any collegiate level this year. Every time ahead of the Raiders' belongs to an NCAA Division I school.
The win gave the Raiders all 10 of their points in the team standings and made them 24th out of 47 schools. Indiana Tech won the men's title and Oklahoma Baptist won the women's. Two Cascade Conference schools – Concordia (men's) and College of Idaho (women's) – placed third.