Harmon, Hoppenot Earn UAA Outdoor Track and Field Honors

OUTDOOR AWARDS

St. Louis, Mo., April 29, 2009 – Washington University sophomore Ben Harmon was named the 2009 University Athletic Association (UAA) outdoor track and field Men’s Most Outstanding Performer in the field events and senior Pierre Hoppenot was tabbed as the conference Men’s Most Outstanding Performer in the running events, as announced Wednesday by the league office.

Additionally, head coach Jeff Stiles and his staff were named UAA Outdoor Men’s and Women’s Coaching Staff of the Year, as the Red and Green took first place overall in both the men’s and women’s 2009 UAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, held April 25-26, in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The Washington U. women’s indoor track and field team won its 10th-straight UAA Outdoor title on Sunday, and the men’s squad won its first conference outdoor championship since 2006. The WU women tallied 231.50 team points at the two-day meet, defeating second place Emory University by 62 points, and the men’s team created a gap of 69 points over second place Carnegie Mellon University. The Bears’ men’s squad took first place in 10 events at the meet, while the women’s team accounted for eight first-place finishes.

Harmon won a pair of UAA individual titles, taking first place in the pole vault with a height of 4.44 meters, just 0.01 meters shy of his all-time personal best mark, and he won the long jump with a personal best and 2009 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championship qualifying mark of 7.12 meters.

Hoppenot, who is competing in track and field for the first time after earning three varsity letters on the men’s soccer team, won three UAA titles, two individual and one relay. He won the 100-meter dash (10.97) and the 200-meter dash (22.05), and teamed with sophomore Tom Gulyas, junior Iby Umana and senior Todd Mowry to take first in the 4x100-meter relay with a school-record breaking time of 41.93.

Stiles, in his first season as the head track and field coach at Washington University, won his second and third UAA track and field championships of the year with the pair of outdoor wins; the WU women won the 2009 UAA Indoor Championship in March. He also has served eight seasons as the head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach. Stiles has earned five UAA women’s cross country and two men’s cross country coaching staff of the year awards over his eight years on the Danforth Campus. He shares the 2009 outdoor honors with his staff of Lane Lohr, Doug Beattie, Jamie Burmeister, Belfred Clark, Seth Kelly, Ryan McDonald, Justin McKnight, Gena Melick and Brian Miller.

Harmon has automatically qualified to compete in the decathlon at the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Championships, to take place May 21-23, at Don Drumm Stadium, in Marietta, Ohio, and his automatic qualifying mark of 6,650 points ranks third in Division III. He will compete in the decathlon for the second year in a row, and will aim to improve on a fifth-place All-America finish in 2008. Hoppenot has provisionally qualified to run in the 100-meter dash at the outdoor championship meet, and his season-best time of 10.76 ranks 17th in Division III.