Husker Track and Field Season-in-Review

The 2004-05 season was a typical successful campaign by the Nebraska track and field program’s lofty standards. A season which began with five athletes representing NU on the highest stage concluded with multiple individual and team honors.

2004 Summer Olympics?Athens, Greece
Nebraska was represented well by both current and former track and field athletes at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. In all, five current and two former Huskers vied for Olympic honors, the 13th straight Games in which NU has been represented.

Dmitrijs Milkevics became the first-ever Husker to reach the semifinals of the men’s 800-meter run while representing Latvia. Milkevics, who earned two All-America honors in 2004 in the 800, won his quarterfinal heat in a time of 1:46.66 before bowing out in the semifinals.

The 2004 women’s NCAA 60-meter hurdle champion, Priscilla Lopes, competed in the 100-meter hurdles for Canada. She finished fifth in heat four of the five-heat first round, and was 20th overall. Another Husker hurdler, Nenad Loncar, represented Serbia and Montenegro in the men’s 110-meter hurdles and finished 46th overall in first round competition with a time of 14.02.

A pair of newcomers to the Nebraska track and field ranks also competed in the Games for Latvia. Dace Ruskule, a sophomore thrower for NU in 2005, earned 14th place in the women’s discus qualifying round after unleashing a throw of 188-5. The mark would have won the 2004 Big 12 Championships by more than 18 feet and earned fourth place at the NCAA Championships. Egle Uljas, a late addition to the Nebraska women’s roster, reached the semifinal round of the women’s 400-meter dash after blazing to a personal- and Estonian-record time of 51.91 in the preliminaries. Uljas was unable to reach the finals, despite running her second-best time of 53.13 in the semis.

2005 NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships
Nebraska exhibited its status as one of the nation’s elite dual-squad programs by combining for three top-10 team finishes at the NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships for the second time in the last three seasons. The men and women also combined to win four individual national titles for the third straight year.

The Huskers experienced an incredibly successful NCAA Indoor Championships, as both the women (fourth) and men (seventh) finished among the nation’s top 10. Both Ashley Selig (pentathlon) and Anne Shadle (mile) claimed their first NCAA wins to help boost the women’s title bid, while Priscilla Lopes earned a pair of All-America honors for finishing second in the 60-meter hurdles and eighth in the 60 meters.

While no NU men earned titles, three athletes managed to finish second, including Dusty Jonas (high jump), Ray Scotten (pole vault) and Dusty Stamer (60 meters). Five others also earned All-America recognition?Gable Baldwin (pole vault), Richard Davidson Jr. (60-meter hurdles), Aaron Plas (high jump), Nate Probasco (200 meters) and Daniel Roper (triple jump).

Nebraska did not experience quite the same success in terms of team results at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, but Huskers still were able to claim eight All-America honors. Included among the awards were a second national title for Anne Shadle (women’s 1,500 meters) and Dmitrijs Milkevics’ first national win (men’s 800 meters).

The women’s squad (eighth) secured its fifth consecutive NCAA top-10 finish at the outdoor meet, while the men’s team (18th) finished among the nation’s top 25 for the eighth straight championship.

2005 Big 12 Indoor and Outdoor Championships
The Huskers once again ruled the Big 12 Conference in 2005, as the men’s and women’s squads combined to bring home three league titles for the second consecutive year.

The women’s team claimed its second-ever sweep of the Big 12 Championships, matching the feat accomplished in 2000. The outdoor win was only the second for the squad since the formation of the Big 12 in 1997, while the women now have recorded a total of seven titles in the conference’s nine-year history.

Nebraska continued to sit on its perch as the league’s dominant men’s program. The Huskers earned their eighth indoor conference championship in nine opportunities to run its indoor-outdoor championship total to 12.

NU has won at least one Big 12 trophy in every season except one (1999), while its combined 19 men’s and women’s titles rank No. 1 among conference teams. Texas runs a distant second in the race with a total of 13. Nebraska now owns 97 all-time conference team titles, and next year’s edition of the Huskers will have a chance to crack the century mark.

Individually, Nebraska athletes brought home 17 (nine indoor, eight outdoor) Big 12 titles in 2005, more than any other conference team. Texas rated a close second with 16 wins, while Colorado and Texas Tech were each a distant third with eight.

The NU women won nine of the Big 12’s top honors. Priscilla Lopes led the way with her first three individual wins (indoor: 60 meters, 60-meter hurdles; outdoor: 100-meter hurdles), while Ashley Selig (indoor: pentathlon; outdoor: heptathlon) and Anne Shadle (indoor: mile; outdoor: 5,000 meters) each added indoor-outdoor sweeps of their events. Dace Ruskule (discus) and Kayla Wilkinson (javelin) also notched outdoor titles for the women’s squad.

With the exception of the 4x100-meter relay squad, no member of the Husker men’s team claimed duplicate individual titles. Nine different athletes had a hand in earning eight conference championships. Ray Scotten (indoor) and Gable Baldwin (outdoor) recorded an NU sweep in the Big 12 pole vault, while the duo of Dusty Stamer (60 meters) and Nate Probasco (200 meters) showed Nebraska’s strength in the indoor short sprint events. Nenad Loncar (indoor: 60-meter hurdles), Aaron Plas (outdoor: high jump) and Daniel Roper (indoor: triple jump) each notched their first-ever league championships, and the 4x100-meter relay team of Stamer, Probasco, Arturs Abolins and Oliver Williams Jr. won a second straight gold for the first time in school history.

2005 Record Breakers
Several athletes cemented their place in Husker track and field history by breaking some of the program’s elite records during the 2005 season.

Leading the NU record breakers was Anne Shadle, who reset the women’s indoor mile and outdoor 1,500-meter standards. Both marks stood for more than 10 years?since the 1992 season. Shadle’s records came in fantastic fashion. The South Sioux City, Neb., native broke each mark to claim NCAA championships. Her time of 4:38.22 bumped former Husker great Fran ten Bensel’s mark of 4:38.33 from the top of the indoor mile charts, while her 4:11.37 clocking did the same to Lisa Darley Graham’s former 1,500-meter record of 4:12.38.

Shadle was not the only Nebraska athlete breaking records on the way to claiming championships. Teammate Ashley Selig shattered Janet Blomstedt’s 1996 school record of 4,235 points to win the NCAA indoor pentathlon title with a score of 4,269 points. Dmitrijs Milkevics won his NCAA outdoor 800-meter title in an NU school-record time of 1:44.74. Milkevics’ mark just edged Dieudonne Kwizera’s 15-year old standard of 1:44.76.

Milkevics not only broke a Nebraska record in 2005, he made headlines during the indoor season when he set the collegiate 600-meter record of 1:15.60 at the Frank Sevigne Husker Invitational. The Riga, Latvia, native’s mark was only 0.48 shy of the world record, while he smashed the former Husker (1:19.05) and Bob Devaney Sports Center Track (1:17.92) bests.

The oldest record surpassed in 2005 came when Priscilla Lopes won the 60-meter dash at the Big 12 Indoor Championships with a blistering time of 7.23. Lopes won the conference title while edging former Husker Merlene Ottey’s 24-year-old record of 7.24. The mark was one of 14 owned by the seven-time Olympian Ottey, while it also was the seventh-oldest on the women’s all-time charts.

The final two standards passed during the past season were relay marks that were each merely a year young. Nebraska’s men’s 4x100-meter relay team of Arturs Abolins, Oliver Williams Jr., Nate Probaso and Dusty Stamer surpassed the 2004 school record of 39.41 at the NCAA Midwest Region Championships by assembling a time of 39.19. Three of the four Huskers will return next season to take a shot at breaking the mark again, with Stamer being the relay’s lone graduate.

The men’s 4x110-meter shuttle hurdle relay squad of Richard Davidson Jr., Courtney Jones, Nenad Loncar and Ross set a Big 12 record of 55.12 to earn silver at the Penn Relays. The time broke the foursome’s previous 2004 school record of 56.14 by more than a second. The team will rebuild in 2006 as it loses two standouts in Davidson Jr. and Loncar, but NU appears to have a solid foundation with Jones and Ross.

2005 Awards
Much like any year, Huskers collected numerous honors for their 2005 accomplishments. Leading the way was Head Coach Gary Pepin.

Pepin was voted the Big 12 Conference Men’s Indoor and Women’s Outdoor Coach of the Year by his peers, while he swept both Men’s and Women’s Indoor Coach of the Year honors for the Midwest Region from the United States Track Coaches Association. He also earned the women’s district and men’s regional coaching honors during the outdoor season from the USTCA.

Priscilla Lopes and Anne Shadle each claimed USTCA Female Athlete of the Year awards for the Midwest Region after dominating their respective indoor and outdoor seasons. Both also won Big 12 Track and Field Athlete of the Week honors in 2005 along with Gable Baldwin, Dmitrijs Milkevics, Ray Scotten and Ashley Selig.

The most impressive decorations earned by Huskers in 2005 may have been for their academic accomplishments. A total of 35 track and field student-athletes, nearly one-third of the entire roster, reached academic All-Big 12 status during the year, while Issar Yazhbin was one of only seven conference athletes to register a perfect 4.0 grade-point average. The numbers were even higher for the Big 12 Commissioner’s Spring Honor Roll, as 64 athletes qualified after registering GPAs of 3.0 or higher during the spring semester.

Looking Ahead
While 2005 provided another successful campaign for the Nebraska track and field programs, the future looks even brighter.

NU loses only five of the 28 Huskers who qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Championships?Richard Davidson Jr., Christi Lehman, Nenad Loncar, Anne Shadle and Dusty Stamer. While the five seniors will be missed, 13 NCAA All-Americans (nine men, four women), and four NCAA champions, will try to elevate Nebraska to new heights in 2006. Included in those numbers are 2005 U.S. discus champion Becky Breisch and 2004 indoor and outdoor All-American pole vaulter Jenny Green, who are expected to rejoin the Huskers after redshirting during the 2005 season because of injuries.