Titans Place Fourth In Tight Race For NCAA Indoor Crown

Pete Delzer (So. • Oconto Falls) won the 35-pound weight throw and placed seventh in the shot put as UW-Oshkosh finished fourth at the NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championship held Friday and Saturday (March 11-12) in Columbus, Ohio.

Defending champion North Central College (lll.) amassed 45 points in the team standings to edge Central College (Iowa) by one point. The top-four squads were each separated by a point as UW-La Crosse finished third with 43 points and UW-Oshkosh fourth with 42. UW-Oshkosh, which shared the 2009 NCAA Division III title with UW-La Crosse, finished fourth at last year's meet with 31 points.

Completing the list of teams finishing in the top 10 were fifth-place Buffalo State College (N.Y.) with 19 points, sixth-place Amherst College (Mass.) with 18, seventh-place Bates College (Maine) with 17, eighth-place Washington University (Mo.) with 16, ninth-place Springfield College (Mass.) with 15 and 10th-place UW-Stevens Point and UW-Whitewater with 14. A total of 67 teams scored points at this year's championship.

Delzer defeated 13 other participants in the 35-pound weight throw with a winning and season-best distance of 64-3 3/4. He also finished seventh among 13 entrants in the shot put with a throw of 52-7 1/4.

Tony Baker (Sr. • Oshkosh) matched Delzer's multiple All-America efforts by finishing fifth in the shot put with a distance of 54-0 1/2 and eighth in the 35-pound weight throw with a mark of 61-8 1/4. Baker earned All-America honors at last year's meet with a third-place distance of 61-5 in the 35-pound weight throw.

UW-Oshkosh also benefited from the individual performances of Nick Baatz (So. • Brownsville), Ben Ludtke (Jr. • Lyons) and Alan German (Jr. • West Bend). Baatz finished third in the shot put with a distance of 54-9 1/4, while Ludtke placed fourth in the 35-pound weight throw with a mark of 63-5 and German eighth in the pentathlon with 3,473 points.

The Titans were prominent in the relays as John Cejka (So. • Wausau) led a pair of All-America listings. In the distance medley relay, Cejka, Brett DeNure (So. • Monroe), Nate Stymiest (Jr. • Oconto Falls) and Ben Wizner (Sr. • Onalaska) finished second with a time of 10:01.12. The 1,600-meter relay featured Cejka, David Edwards (Sr. • Waterford), Chris Lipke (Sr. • Wautoma) and Corey Wilch (Fr. • Waukesha) placing fourth with a time of 3:19.64.

The meet featured 15 events, with the top eight finishers in each category collecting All-America status. The top four teams collected a trophy.