Geary, Pendleton bring home Top-5 finishes at Nationals

Kirsten Geary and Wilson Pendleton each went out to Sioux Falls, SD, for the NAIA Indoor Track & Field Championships, feeling confident in their abilities to compete with the nation's best. The duo did that and then some. Geary smashed her own 5K school records twice as did Pendleton in the shot put, resulting in each finishing in 5th place in their respective events.

For Geary, her march began in Thursday's prelims. Needing a top-12 finish to advance to Saturday's final, Geary obliterated her own school record with a time of 17:34.97. It broke her previous mark by 16.12 seconds. She took that momentum into Saturday's final and ran the 5K in a time of 17:31.17, to break her own record again by almost 4 seconds. She finished 5th out of the 12 finalists.

Pendleton entered Saturday knowing the shot put prelims and final would go back-to-back. After a light first throw in prelims (15.11m), Pendleton charged to the top of the leaderboard with a throw of 16.63m to crush his own PR and school records. That mark would last all of 10 minutes as his 3rd throw of the prelims went a distance of 16.70m. Pendleton placed 5th heading into the final. Preliminary results were allowed to be counted in the finals, which benefited Pendleton as he was not able to log a proper throw in his 3 attempts. The record of 16.70m was good enough to hold for the 5th place finish out of 9 finalists.