Todd, Wilde earn Big Sky titles for Griz
GREELEY, Colo. — Both the Montana Grizzlies’ track and field teams finished sixth at the Big Sky Conference championships, which exceeded preseason expectations.
Evan Todd and Holly Sudol did what you probably expected, and picked half of the four individual Big Sky individual titles for the Griz Saturday.
The meet ended the first season for Montana under head coach Doug Fraley, who is excited for the future.
“I’m really proud of the way both teams went out and competed this week,” Fraley said. “For us to be able to have finished eighth indoors and been picked eighth outdoors and move to sixth in both, I feel like that’s solid progress. Obviously, we’re not anywhere near where we would like to be, but that really is significant progress.”
Todd, a junior out of Glacier High, won the javelin and Sudol was the top seed ahead of winning the 400-meter hurdles.
But there were also two champions that rose above all expectations. Jaydon Green ran a PR in the men’s 110-meter hurdles and Whitefish freshman Erin Wilde jumped a lifetime best — 5 feet, 9.25 inches — to win the women’s high jump on criteria.
The Montana women finished with 72 points and the men 66.5.
Wilde’s high jump title came early on Saturday. She entered the meet as the third seed (5-8) and had a flawless run up to the bar on three straight clearances, and missed just once before moving to 5-9.25. She and MSU’s Lucy Corbett missed twice before clearing it on their final attempts. Corbett had two earlier misses, and lost.
“I’m trying not to cry of happiness. It feels really good,” Wilde said. “I had a lot of butterflies at the beginning of the competition.”
She became Montana’s first outdoor high jump champion since Brenda Naber did it in 1996.
Todd entered as a heavy favorite as both the defending champion and the leader on this season’s performance list. He then had the top six throws of the competition; his top mark was 222-4.
“It feels great. It’s expected,” Todd said. “I came in with the mindset today that I was going to compete. It didn’t really matter what I was going to throw today, it just mattered that I came out on top.”
He becomes Montana’s third two-time winner in the event and just the second to successfully defend his title. It’s the Grizzlies’ seventh Big Sky title since 2010.
Green had the fourth-fasted time in the league coming in, but won his hurdles title in .01 seconds. It’s Montana’s first in the event since Matt Larson in 2007.
Sudol had run several sub-60 times in her signature race. At about 300 meters was still locked in a close race, but ended up building nearly a second of separation.
Other top performers included Teagun Holycross, who was second in the men’s 100 meters and fifth in the 200; and Morgan Radtke, who was fifth in both the high jump and the heptathlon.