Complete Friday results (PDF)
        VIDEO: Distance medley relay    Long jump    Heptathlon 800

NAMPA, Idaho – Katy Gross started her day by going 4 for 4. By the end of it, she had gone 3 for 3 – and that was even better.
 
The Seattle Pacific senior won the first four events of the pentathlon at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference indoor track and field meet, then ran a personal-best time in the meet-ending 800-meter run to claim her third multi-event championship in as many years.

Gross (Everett, Wash. / Cascade HS) tallied 3,505 points in the Jackson's Track facility at the Idaho Center. That broke her own meet record and personal-best score of 3,469, with which she won last year's title. Friday's total easily exceeded the NCAA provisional qualifying minimum of 3,300 and puts her No. 6 on the Division II list.
 
“This was a huge mental victory for me,” Gross said. “I wasn't really thinking about the individual wins or anything. I was just thinking about giving it everything I had, and it worked out.”
 
Her winning margin was close – 47 points in front of Alaska Anchorage sophomore Karolin Anders, who wound up with 3,458.

The Falcons, going for their 10^th consecutive team title, are in fourth place with 31 points after Friday's action. Western Washington leads with 63.5, followed by Alaska Anchorage (48) and Northwest Nazarene (33).
 
Gross is just the second SPU athlete to win three straight titles in the same GNAC event. The only one to do better than that was sprinter Latasha Essien, who captured four consecutive 60-meter dash crowns from 2007-10. Jessica Pixler won three titles in the 800 (2007-10) and the mile, and Ali Worthen claimed three in the long jump (2009-12), but in each case, only two of them were back-to-back.
 
“In the other two (pentathlon wins), I went into them with better marks under my belt for that year,” Gross said. “So pretty much half the battle (for this one) was getting my mindset right, and reminding myself in every event, 'I'm strong enough for this; I can push through it.'”
 
Later Friday, Gross picked up fourth-place points for the Falcons in the long jump, going 17 feet, 10 ¼ inches – farther than the 17-9 ½ that she went in the pent long jump a few hours earlier. Sophomore teammate Tasia Baldwin (Tacoma, Wash. / Foss HS) went even farther, sailing 18-5 ¼ and smashing her previous best mark of 17-11 ¾ that tied her for fifth place in last yaer's GNACs.
 
Defending 60-meter dash champion Kishia Mitchell (Puyallup, Wash. / Rogers HS) retained her top seed with a 7.80 run in the preliminaries. But the top five times all were within a tenth of a second. Closest to Mitchell heading into Saturday's finals is Christabel Leonce of Northwest Nazarene (7.83).

The Falcons got onto the NCAA provisional qualifying list in the 4,000-meter distance medley relay. Sophomore Jasmine Johnson (Federal Way, Wash. / Federal Way HS), senior BryAnne Wochnick (Portland, Ore.), junior McKayla Fricker (Canby, Ore.) and freshman Lynelle Decker (Vancouver, Wash. / Mountain View HS) finished third in 12 minutes, 19.15 seconds. The standard is 12:20.01. Last month, a different foursome barely missed, finishing in 12:21.74 at the UW Invitational.

 FRIDAY'S FAST START
Typically a strong 60-meter hurdler, Gross opened the pentathlon by winning that race in 9.19 seconds, just .02 shy of her personal best. That put 871 points into the book and gave her an immediate 100-point margin over Anchorage's Anders, who was seen as the biggest threat to Gross' three-peat hopes.
 
Gross then cleared 5 feet, 4 ½ inches in the high jump, tying the meet record set by Simon Fraser's Rachelle Burnett in 2011. Anders was 1 ¼ inches behind, a difference of 36 points (783-747). Then, she won the shot put with a PR performance of 36-5 ½. That was 5 ¾ inches in front of Anders, giving Gross a 602-573 edge and stretching her overall lead to 165 points.
 
The long jump is one of Gross' strong suits, and she finished two inches ahead of Anders, 17-9 ½-17-7 ½, for a slight 677-673 advantage. Gross had 2,933 points through four events, and Anders 2,754, a 179-point lead with only the 800 remaining.
 
It was that race – by her own acknowledgement, her least favorite of the five events – that Gross secured the title. She finished seventh in 2:40.04, knocking nearly three seconds off her previous best time of 2:42.80. Anders was second in 2:29.12, and Northwest Nazarene's Hannah Borden won in a meet-record time 2:23.83. Anders outscored Gross by 132 points, 704-572, but it wasn't enough to catch the Falcon senior.
 
“Karl (Lerum, SPU's head coach) and I had been talking slowing the pace down in the beginning to bring more juice for the end,” Gross said. “Everyone went out really fast, but I stayed right on my pace. I started out way behind everyone, then a couple of the 200-meter laps in, I started picking people off.
 
“I just knew I felt really strong, and that was a really good feeling to have,” she added. “Especially in the 800.”
  

NCAA WOMEN'S INDOOR TRACK & FIELD
GNAC Championships
Friday, February 15, 2013
Jackson's Track at the Idaho Center / Nampa, Idaho
                      
Team scores (through Friday's 6 finals) – 1, Western Washington 63 ½; 2, Alaska Anchorage 48; 3, Northwest Nazarene 33; 4, Seattle Pacific 31; 5, Central Washington 23; 6, Simon Fraser 20; 7, Montana State Billings 10; 8, Western Oregon 4; 9, Saint Martin's 1 ½.

Pentathlon – 1, Katy Gross (SPU) 3,505# (meet record; breaks old record of 3,469 set by Gross in 2012); 2, Karolin Anders (UAA) 3,458; 3, Katie Reichert (WWU) 3,144; 4, Laura Pridgen (NNU) 2,949; 5, Leah Berry (MSUB) 2,922; 6, Hannah Borden (NNU) 2.844; 7, Maylea Tooze (WOU) 2,816; 8, Julianna Joy (CWU) 2,639; 9, Lexi Sarver (NNU) 2,466; 10, Kathryn Curtis (NNU) 2,242.
Pentathlon 60 hurdles – 1, Gross (SPU) 9.19 (871 points). No other SPU competitors.
Pentathlon high jump – 1, Gross 5-4 ½ / 1.64m  (783 points) (ties meet record set by Rachelle Barnett (SFU) in 2011). No other SPU competitors.
Pentathlon shot put – 1, Gross 36-5 ½ / 11.11m (602 points). No other SPU competitors.
Pentathlon long jump – 1, Gross 17-9 ½ / 5.42m (677 points). No other SPU competitors.
Pentathlon 800 – 1, Gorden (NNU) 2:23.83 (772 points) (meet record, breaks old record of 2:26.78 set by Jenifer Pike (SPU) in 2011). SPU placer – 7, Gross 2:40.04 (572 points).
 
OTHER FRIDAY FINALS
3,000 – 1, Susan Tanui (UAA) 9:54.95. SPU placers – 5, Katie Thralls 10:21.01; 10, Katie Morris 10:41.40; 16, Anna Patti 11:31.57.
Distance medley relay – 1, Simon Fraser 11:47.86. SPU placer – 3, Seattle Pacific (Jasmine Johnson, BryAnne Wochnick, McKayla Fricker, Lynelle Decker) 12:19.15#.
Pole vault – 1, Karis Anderson (WWU) 12-4 / 3.76m. No SPU competitors.
Long jump – 1, Emily Warman (WWU) 18-9 ¾ / 5.73m. SPU placers – 3, Tasia Baldwin 18-5 ¼ / 5.62m; 4, Katy Gross 17-10 ¼ / 5.44m; 9, Trinna Miranda 17-0 ¾ / 5.20m.
Weight throw – 1, Becki Duhamel (CWU) 54-2 / 16.51m. No SPU competitors.
 
FRIDAY PRELIMINARIES
60-meter dash – 1, Kishia Mitchell (SPU) 7.80. Other SPU finals qualifiers – 6, Tasia Baldwin 7.92; 8, BryAnne Wochnick 7.99. No other SPU competitors.
60 hurdles – 1, Tanya Bjornsson (WWU) 8.84. SPU finals qualifier – 5, Maliea Luquin 8.97. Other SPU competitors – 9, Katy Gross 9.39.

# NCAA provisional qualifying