AZUSA, Calif. -- It seems to be 2008 all over again.

For the second straight year Azusa Pacific is joyful and bitter in all one fell swoop. The Cougars are national champions of NAIA men’s indoor track & field, but they were denied a sweep of the men’s and women’s crowns by just a mere point.

Azusa Pacific won its third straight NAIA Men’s Indoor Track & Field Championship Meet and its sixth in the past 8 years with a near-perfect third-day effort that offered convincing victory over the rest of the field. The Cougars tallied 78.5 points to beat second-place Dickinson State University by 23.5 points. The Blue Hawks tallied 55 points. Oklahoma Baptist University was third with 39.

On the other side of the ledger, however, the Cougar women again fell 1 point short to Wayland Baptist University for the second straight year, and the agony of this defeat will twist in the stomach for months and perhaps years to come.

Last year Wayland Baptist needed to finish at least second in the final event of the meet, the 4x400-meter relay, to steal the championship from Azusa Pacific, which idly stood by and watched the 4x4. The Pioneers pulled off the win with a second-place effort, good enough for 8 team points to rally past the Cougars, 71-70. This year, the Cougars’ 4x400-meter relay had to finish at least third to turn the tables and knock off WBU, which had no entry in the 4x400 finals. Though the Cougars ran a season-best 3:51.31, they came in fourth, missing third by a second and missing the title again by a point.

Adding to the anguish is the fact that earlier in the day Cougars Zora Golcevska and Tiffeny Parker originally finished first and second in the 60-meter hurdles with Golcevska clocking a season-best 8.76 and Parker posting a personal-record 8.86, beating Wayland Baptist’s Latanya Nation by .002 of a second. However, Pioneer coach Brian Whitlock appealed for a re-read of the finals photo. After a lengthy review the NAIA Indoor Track & Field Games Committee opted to call Parker and Nation a dead heat at both 8.86 and a tie for second place and splitting the 14 points that awarded between second and third place finishes. As a result, a point was taken from the Cougars and granted to Wayland Baptist instead, a 2-point swing the proved to be the difference in the championship.

Coming into the meet, the women’s championship was expected to be close between Azusa Pacific and Wayland Baptist, and every event head-to-head encounter was of paramount importance to each school.

“I didn’t care if I finished second or fifth in the hurdles,” said Parker, “I was not going to let the Wayland Baptist girl beat me. I know I beat her for a fact. It’s just one of those things you know as an athlete. It’s sad for the team the way it happened.”

There was no such drama on the men’s side who had clinched the championship an hour or so before when junior Jordan Savidge won the men’s pole vault title with an effort of 16’ 8¾”. It was a choppy performance for Savidge, who had at least 1 miss at 5 different heights, but he was clearly the best in the field of vaulters and in the end becomes only the third Cougar ever, and the first since 1995, to win an NAIA indoor pole vault crown.

“We just hit on each cylinder today,” said Azusa Pacific men’s coach Kevin Reid, who for the seventh time was named the NAIA Indoor Coach of the Year. “We scored big points where we should have, such as Jordan, but in the events where I thought we’d get 1, 2, maybe 3 points, we instead got 5 or 6 or 8 points. We got great support across the board.”

For an NAIA record third consecutive year, senior Aron Rono was named the meet’s most outstanding performer after winning the mile in NAIA record fashion (4:03.74), the 3000 meters (8:14.92) and then anchoring the Cougars to a fabulous come-from-behind victory in the distance medley relay, shattering the NAIA record in the process by 6 seconds with a 9:50.88.

“I’m telling you that Aron’s run was one of the most spectacular performances I’ve ever seen on the college level,” said Reid. “We were 60 or 70 meters behind when Aron started his leg, and he ran an amazing race to track down the Oklahoma Christian guy, and they broke the national record as well.”

Rono becomes the first person in history to win the NAIA mile 4 consecutive years, and with that he is only the third athlete in NAIA history to win one event 4 times. Including relays, all of which he anchored, Rono has now won 14 NAIA track & field titles between the indoor and outdoor sports, just 2 shy of the all-time record 16 won by former Cougar Ade Olukoju.(1987-90).

Among the bonus points the Cougars garnered, freshman Abednego Magut may have been the biggest surprise. In just his third race ever on a track, the native Kenyan finished second in the 5000 meters with a 14:43.93. He led through much of the race, and it took a veteran like Malone’s Paul Robinson to track down Magut over the final 100 meters and edge him by a second for the victory.

In the 600 meters Anthony Logan ran the third fastest time in school history with a 1:18.92 to finish second. Junior Montrail Brooks was fourth with a 1:20:20.

“This has been a great group of men to coach because of their closeness,” said Reid. “We don’t group of athletes who go around as distance runners, or jumpers or sprinters. This is one big team by the conduct of each man, and that makes this championship rather special.”

Senior Jaime Canterbury, the most celebrated women’s distance runner in Azusa Pacific history, closed out her outstanding indoor career by winning the NAIA mile with a 4:53.65. She was third in the 3000 meters with a 9:57.71.

Other Cougar women who turned in All-American performances during Saturday’s final day of competition include sophomore Mandy Ross, who was fourth in the 400 meters (56.87) and sophomore Jacky Kipwambok, posting a 17:38.89 to finish third in the 5000 meters.