Vanessa Aniteye
Eagle River’s Vanessa Aniteye settled into the blocks Saturday afternoon at Grand Valley State Track & Field Stadium in Allendale, Mich., with a racing resume that featured seven All-American relay awards – three First-Team honors and four Second-Team.
Absent from her credentials was an individual All-American.
No longer.
The Seattle Pacific sprinter smashed her personal- and school-record in the 400 meters for the second time in three days, clocking 53.64 seconds to finish sixth at the Division II nationals.
Aniteye (Chugiak High) slashed .54 of a second off her previous PR of 54.18, set in Thursday’s preliminaries. In the space of three days, Aniteye obliterated her PR by .96, lowering it to 53.64 from 54.60.
Her 53.64 is the second-fastest ever by Alaskan behind UAA’s Mary Pearce (Dimond High), who ran 53.56 at the 2007 NCAAs.
Aniteye also has the distinction of littering record books at two different schools.
Aniteye, who Thursday helped Seattle Pacific’s 4×100 relay team to a ninth-place finish for Second-Team All-American honors, is a transfer from UAA. At UAA, she is No. 2 all-time in the 400 and, indoors and outdoors, accumulated All-American status six times in relays.
Cole Nash
UAA distance standout Cole Nash likewise bagged a First-Team All-American honor. He clocked 14:05.62 in the 5,000 meters to finish eighth, the last spot for First-Team.
Nash’s gutsy race was notable not just for his All-American work, but because he was coming off a 10,000 meters Thursday night in which he finished 13th, one spot out of being Second-Team All-American.
He was one of two Seawolves to pocket All-American honors. Teammate Joshua Wagner finished ninth in the 110-meter hurdles in 14:38 to earn Second-Team All-American status. The 110 hurdles were run in two heats, an unusual format necessitated when two athletes won protests from Friday’s preliminaries and were awarded spots in the final. That made for an 11-man final. Tracks usually have nine lanes. Thus, two heats instead of the traditional one-heat final.
At the Division I West Preliminaries in Fayetteville, Ark., Emma Nelson of Chugiak (Chugiak High), who competes for Oregon State, finished 24th in the high jump field of 48 bounders with a height of 5 feet, 7.25 inches. Nelson cleared her first attempts at both 5-5.25 and 5-7.25 before missing all three attempts at 5-9.25.