Squires, Koerner, Adams earn gold for Pride track and field at Heart Indoor Championships

MARYVILLE, Mo. - Nearing the the end of their 2025 indoor season, the Clarke University track and field team earned a fifth place finish on the women's side, the same spot they landed at in 2024, and a seventh place finish on the men's side, an improvement from their 2024 placement.

The Pride took home three event gold medals including the second-straight win for Grace Squires in the indoor pole vault as she won the event by clearing 3.45 meters, besting her teammate Emma Grant by 0.3 meters as Grant grabbed her third-straight silver in the pole vault.

On Friday, Annemarie Koerner earned a win in the pentathlon by scoring a school record 3449 points as she earned the most amount of points in the field in three of the five events, which were the 60-meter hurdles, the high jump, and the long jump.

The top performance on the men's side was sweeping the podium in the high jump led by the NAIA A Standard height of 2.06 meters cleared by both Daniel Adams and Hasmar Francois as Adams claimed the gold by clearing the height on his first attempts where Francois cleared it on his second attempt. Amani Drayton earned the bronze in the high jump with a final height of 1.98 meters, coming up short on his three attempts to hit the NAIA B Standard of 2.03 meters but still helped clinch that podium sweep for CU and earned six points for Clarke in the team standings.

Along with Koerner's pentathlon mark, two other Clarke individuals and two relay teams broke school records in Maryville as Jake Etherington set a new 200-meter dash record of 21.96 seconds in a third place effort, earning CU six points and Joshua Musonda ran a 50.05-second 400-meter dash to break the school record.

The two relays that broke records also came on the men's side as the 4x800-meter relay team of Chesney Capron, Bryce Kondos, Cord Nietert, and Kole Haverly finished in third place with a time of 7:58.27 for another six points for the Pride then Capron and Haverly also participated in CU's record breaking distance medley relay team that also included Charles Juntunen III and Isaac Guerrero for a fifth place finish of 10:42.50 and another four points.

Other point scoring performances for the Pride women included their 4x400-meter relay team of Samantha Fowler, Blanca Siemes, Isabelle Matthews, and Koerner combining for a time of 4:09.59, Maia Beich earned 2.5 points with a sixth place finish in the pole vault, Koerner also finished third in the long jump at a distance of 5.57 meters for six points, Matthews and Siemes both scored in the high jump with Matthews finishing third at 1.55 meters, and Siemes not far behind at 1.50 meters, Rory Bickler combined to score four points with a sixth place finish inthe 5K and an eighth place in the mile, and Brie Christoffer finished in fifth place in the 60-meter hurdles to grab four more points.

The rest of the men's point scorers included Harm van den Berkmortel also finishing in fifth in the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.50 seconds and Haverly grabbed two points individually with a 1K seventh place time of 2:33.90.

Full Results for Pride competitors can be found here: https://results.blacksquirreltiming.com/meets/43130/teams/1072595

Pride track and field will send Adams, Francois, Squires, and Koerner to the NAIA National Track and Field Indoor Championships in Gainesville, Fla. with the three-day event beginning on Thursday, Feb. 27 and ending on Saturday, Mar. 1.