UW-Platteville's Tyler Sigl held off all challenges to win an incredibly close 10,000-meter run at NCAA Division III national track and field championships at UW-Oshkosh.
The defending national champion won a sprint to the finish line, capturing his second straight championship in 30:34.51. He edged Wartburg's Kevin Balster (30:34.53) by two-hundredths of a second and third-place finisher Willy Kaul of UW-Oshkosh (30:53.59) by just over a second.
Sigl won last year's title in 30:54.19 in a pouring rain in Oshkosh. This year, he took advantage of near-perfect 55-degree temperatures to better his own Titan Stadium facility record by almost 30 seconds and successfully defend his crown.
He became just the fifth runner in NCAA III history to win two straight 10,000-meter runs and the first since Mount Union's Dave Cooper in 1997-98. Sigl also is the eighth runner to complete the distance double play of winning the cross country individual title and the outdoor 10,000 in the same school year.
With Sigl's two championships and Corey Stelljes's 1993 title, UW-Platteville has won the 10,000-meter run three times, tied for second most in NCAA III history.
Scott Howard earned all-America honors in the pole vault Thursday, just as he did at the indoor nationals. The junior vaulted 15-5 to finish in seventh place. (The top eight earn national honors.)
In Thursday's 1,500-meter trials, both Marcia Taddy and Kyle Stangel advanced to Saturday's finals. Taddy, the defending champion, had the third-best time in Thursday's preliminary runs, finishing in 4:30.73. Stangel, an all-American in the 1,500 last year, had the men's fourth-fastest time, 3:54.93.
Mitch Spees just missed making the nine-person field in the finals of the 400-meter hurdles. He finished his preliminary run in 54.36, missing the finals by less than a second.
Taddy and Jessica Scott each run 800-meter trials Friday, as does 110-meter hurdler Ben Zizis. Sigl, now a 12-time track and cross country all-American, will conclude his stellar career Saturday with the 5,000-meter run.
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