Track and field teams pace home meet

The IU track and field teams had a tune-up opportunity at home Friday with the Big Ten Championships just a week away.

Suffice it to say they took advantage of it.

The Hoosiers climbed up all-time record lists and won 17 events to cap a strong host performance at the 33rd annual Billy Hayes Invitational at Robert C. Haugh Track & Field Complex.

Several IU athletes found their names in more elite company after a day of competing on the facility’s one-year-old Polytan surface.

Junior sprinter Kind Butler took home both the men’s 100- and 200-meter dash events, completing the former in a Big Ten-leading 10.35 seconds — good for fourth-best all-time at IU. Similarly, sophomore jumper Emma Kimoto scored the fourth-highest clearance in school history by winning the women’s high jump at 1.77 meters.

Distance runners also fared historically well.

Junior Breanne Ehrman notched the school’s eighth-best time in the women’s 1,500-meter event, finishing in 4:23.34, and fellow junior Jordan Gray also etched her name further up in the IU record books as her 2:07 finish in winning the women’s collegiate 800-meter event clocked in 10th in school history.

The Hoosiers fared well even beyond the records.

Senior Vera Neuenswander won an IU-dominated women’s pole vaulting event, clearing 4.20, and teammates sophomore Kelsie Ahbe and senior Stephanie Chin finished second and fourth, respectively.

The Hoosiers now turn their focus to the Big Ten Championships, which take place from May 13-15 in Iowa City, Iowa.

The IU men and women emerged from last year’s conference meet with five individual champions on the second day, and now-junior Derek Drouin and former IU runner Molly Beckwith earned Big Ten Athlete of the Year honors.

— Drew Allen