Freshman Marianne Barber blew past opponents in route to a 54.98 winning finish in the women’s 400-meters. With the win, Barber became the first BYU woman to win an indoor 400 conference title since Brooke Stanton in 1991.

“Marianne has been phenomenal all season,” said BYU sprints coach Kyle Grossarth. “She came with a great work ethic and has some great teammates with experience that she continues to learn from.”

Brilee Pontius followed close behind Barber, taking second with a personal best 55.04. In doing so, Pontius arrived on the Cougar’s 400 top-10 board, surpassing Holly Gibbons (2000) for 10th all-time and joining teammates Barber, Annalise Hart and Alena Ellsworth on the board.

Barber and Pontius returned to the track in the meet’s final event of the day, the women’s 4×400-meter relay. Together with Meghan Hunter and Sami Oblad, Barber and Pontius guided BYU to a 4×400 championship with a victorious time of 3:43.37. The squad of Halley Folsom Walker, Pontius, Hart and Brinn Jensen won the MPSF title in 2022, making this BYU’s first ever indoor 4×400 conference repeat.

Adaobi Tabugbo continued her 60-meter hurdles dominance with a conference championship time of 8.35.

“Adaobi is a big-time competitor and can just find that extra something when she needs to,” Grossarth said.

BYU Director of Track and Field Ed Eyestone praised Tabugbo as well.

“We can always count on Adaobi,” Eyestone said. “She has such a wonderful start and just blows out of those starting blocks in great form and can’t not be checked.”

Tabugbo and Rahni Turner of Long Beach State were neck and neck to the finish with Tabugbo being ruled the winner at 8.343 to Turner’s 8.346. With her performance on Saturday, Tabugbo became BYU’s first to go back-to-back with women’s indoor 60 hurdles conference crowns since Kirsten Bolm in 2000-01.

Heather Hanson and Hunter went one-two in the women’s 800-meter title race. Hanson’s winning 2:08.45 delivered her first-career conference championship and BYU’s third straight in the event. Hunter took home the MPSF’s 800 trophy a season ago, while Anna Camp-Bennett did son in 2020.

BYU throwers controlled the top spots in the women’s shot put on Saturday as well. Gretchen Hoekstre won the event with a throw of 16.24m/53-3.5 and Jessica Thompson finished runner-up at 15.33m/50-3.5. The Cougars now have a second straight MPSF women’s shot put title as Thompson took it home in 2022. BYU hasn’t won back-to-back indoor shot put championships since 1995-96.

BYU’s seven individual titles at the 2023 MPSF Championship meet and 16 over the last two seasons give the program 164 all-time and its most in a two-season stretch since 2004-05.

The Cougars’ team championship marks its first back-to-back conference crowns since 2010-11 and 20th all-time.

2023 marked the Cougars 12th and final season competing in the MPSF. In 2024, BYU will face its first Big 12 Conference Championship. The Big 12 will conduct its 2023 meet at Texas Tech’s Sports Performance Center in Lubbock, Texas on Feb. 24-25.

“Moving into the Big 12 next year, I felt it was important for us to finish off conference championships in style with a victory on both the men’s and women’s side,” Eyestone said. “It shows what we can do when we all work together but from here out the focus is on national qualifiers.”

With one week of competition remaining before NCAA Indoor National Championships, the Cougars have another shot at qualifying times and marks with competition on Feb. 24-25 at home in the Smith Fieldhouse and on the road at Washington’s Ken Shannon Last Chance Invite in Seattle.

On the men’s side, BYU completed its final Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference championship weekend as the men took home the team title (163 points) after Saturday’s four individual championships and a 4×400 victory at The Podium in Spokane, Washington. Four Cougars also competed at Notre Dame, crushing an 11-year-old school record in the distance medley relay.

The day began with a bang in South Bend, Indiana as the distance medley relay team ran 9:21.18 to beat the prior BYU record by nearly eight seconds at the Alex Wilson Invitational. The squad — Casey Clinger, Kenneth Rooks, Sebastian Fernandez and Josh Taylor — finished fifth overall in a tightly contested field, placing just 1.19 seconds behind first-place Wisconsin.

Of the 18 schools participating in the DMR, four were ranked in the top-25. BYU’s squad finished ahead of each of those schools’ teams, including No. 5 Tennessee and No. 11 Texas A&M.

“All four of them did a super job,” BYU director of track and field Ed Eyestone said. “It just really came down to keeping their form and keepings things together through every leg. We carried our momentum. The mile is tough to lead from wire to wire, but I thought Casey knew exactly what he needed to do and closed strong.”

The majority of the men’s team was in Spokane, Washington Saturday as the MPSF championships wrapped up. In total, the men tallied six individual conference titles and two squad championships (DMR, 4x400m) for the weekend, including two top-10 marks for Ben Barton.

Barton finished atop the heptathlon with 5,693 points to surpass Curtis Pugsley for No. 2 all-time at BYU. The total bested his previous No. 6 all-time tally of 5,525 set last month in Arkansas and puts him within four spots of a qualifying national score entering Saturday. In the heptathlon 60-meter hurdles, he finished with a 7.98 time to tie for No. 10 in school history for the event.

“Barton was impressive today,” Eyestone said. “To be second all-time shows how he has harnessed his energies and got the job done.”

With Danny Bryant’s 17.20m/56-5.75 shot put heave, he became the first BYU thrower to win consecutive indoor conference shot put titles since Leif Arrhenius claimed three straight between 2009 and 2011.

Garnica won the mile crossing the line first with a personal record 4:08.54. The victory marked his second conference championship of the weekend after being a part of the DMR’s first-place finish yesterday. Luke Grundvig led all entries in the 3,000-meters at 8:23.71, marking his first indoor championship and the second straight year a Cougar has taken home the 3000m title.

Wrapping up the conference winners is the 4×400-meter relay of Jared Davis, Jace Jensen, Landon Maxfield and Abram Schaap. Posting a 3:09.42 time was good for one second ahead of runner-up Cal St. Fullerton and just under four seconds away from the 4×400 school record set last week in Lubbock, Texas.

“Moving into the Big 12 next year, I felt it was important for us to finish off conference championships in style with a victory. It shows what we can do when we all work together. From here on out the focus will be on our national qualifiers.”

The Cougars are back in action next Friday and Saturday, Feb. 24-25, once again spread out with athletes at Washington and BYU’s third indoor home meet of the season.

Cougar men’s golf smashes tournament record

Fueled by four players who finished in the top 10 of a 126-player field, Brigham Young set a new 54-hole team scoring record (810) to win the 2023 John A. Burns Intercollegiate on Kaua’i. The Cougars dominating performance shattered Auburn’s former scoring record that held for 15 years.

“Playing 27 holes on consecutive days meant anything could happen,” said Bruce Brockbank, BYU’s legendary head men’s golf coach who now has 59 tournament wins to his name across 31 seasons in Provo, Utah. “Our driving accuracy and short game precision were off the charts. It was very rewarding to watch these young men put it all together for a victory in Hawaii.”

BYU built upon their second-round lead of 10 strokes over Arizona to win the program’s fourth Burns team title (1977, 2000, 2007, 2023). Their 54-under total score was anchored by fifth-year senior Carson Lundell

(T3), a 2021 All-American Honorable Mention, as well as Hawaiian-born Keanu Akina (5), David Timmons (T10) and Tyson Shelley (T10).

BYU women’s basketball loses to San Francisco

BYU women’s basketball fell to San Francisco 72-59 at War Memorial Gymnasium on Saturday.

After a back-and-forth opening 20 minutes that saw the score knotted at halftime, San Francisco shot 53.3 percent from the field and 58.3 percent from behind the arc to score 46 second-half points and pull away from the Cougars that were held to 38.7 percent shooting, 35.3 percent from behind the arc, putting up 33 in the second half.

Arielle Mackey-Williams and Nani Falatea were the lone Cougars (14-13, in double figures on the night with 14 and 12 points, respectively. Mackey-Williams matched her career high in field goals made as she went 6-for-15 from the field with four rebounds and an assist. Along with 12 points, Falatea also recorded three rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block.

The nation’s leading rebounder, Lauren Gustin, finished with nine points on 3-of-6 shooting, 13 rebounds, four assists and a steal as she was frequently double and triple-teamed in the post in the 12-point defeat. With her first rebound of the game, Gustin set the single-season West Coast Conference record for total rebounds with 428, passing the 427 set by Danielle Mauldin of Saint Mary’s in 2014. Gustin is currently at 440 with two games to play in the regular season.

Cougar baseball splits doubleheader with LA Tech

BYU baseball split a doubleheader with LA Tech on Saturday, dropping the first game, 8-6, before winning the nightcap, 8-2, at Pat Patterson Park in Rushton.

The Cougars improved to 2-1 on the year, while the Bulldogs fell to 1-2. The final game of the four-game series will be played on Monday at 6 p.m. CST.

“I was proud of the way we played today,” said BYU head coach Trent Pratt. “We had a lot of solid at bats and put pressure on their pitching early. It’s a long season and you’re going to have adversity, so I was pleased with the way we bounced back in the second game.”