EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – Cougars Aron Rono and Jacky Kipwambok closed the opening day of the NAIA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in perfect fashion for Azusa Pacific, winning the men’s and women’s 10,000-meters, respectively, late Thursday to give Azusa Pacific significant points on both sides of the ledger.

Rono, a senior from Kapsabet, Kenya, led wire-to-wire in his 25-lap race, clocking a 30:23.70 and in the process becomes the first athlete in NAIA history to win 4 straight 10,000-meter crowns.

Thirty minutes earlier fellow Kenyan Kipwambok played a cat-and-mouse game with Caroline Karunde of Wayland Baptist University before pulling away over the final 11 laps to beat Karunde by nearly a minute, recording a 34:48.21 to become the first Cougar to win the NAIA women’s 10,000.

“I feel great,” said a relieved Kipwambok. “This is my first national championship, and I knew I was the favorite to win coming in, so it feels good to defend (the expectation). I followed (assistant coach) Preston’s (Grey) word and started to take off from the Wayland girl with about 11 laps to go.”

Seemingly Rono’s victory was never in doubt. Even the meet public address practically awarded Rono the victory, introducing him before the race as the first athlete ever to win 4 10K crowns and becoming only the eighth athlete ever to win at least 6 NAIA individual championships. A half hour later, Rono confirmed the premature coronation with teammate Abednego Magut close behind, finishing second with a 30:58.48 and give the Cougars a robust 18 points out of one event.

“I like racing the 10,000,” said Rono shortly after the race when he still looked strong enough to run another 10,000 meters. “The workouts are so intense that they are mentally challenging. So to win this event 4 times is a big deal to me. One day I’ll be looking back, and it will still be standing that I was the first to win it 4 times.”

The Cougar men are currently in second place after 3 event finals, tallying 20 points and trailing only Concordia University (Ore.) which tops the men’s leader board with 35 points.

The Cougar women are in seventh place through 5 event finals with 10 points from Kipwambok’s victory.

However, both teams are poised to make a run for first after a number of solid first-day marks by several Cougars.

Both Casey Stevick and Tiffeny Parker enjoyed splendid first days in the decathlon and heptathlon, respectively.

Stevick, a sophomore out of Olympia, Wash., leads the decathlon at the midway point with 3,712 points. He opened the day with solid marks in the 100 (11.36) and long jump (21’ 8”), and then came on strong in the afternoon with personal-best efforts in the shot put (47’ 1½”) and 400-meters (52.74) which surrounded a season-best leap in the high jump (6’ 5”).

“It was a fun day,” said Stevick. “I try to tell myself to take one event at a time, but when you get on a roll and you start getting good marks it definitely helps your mindset heading into the next event.”

To top off his day, Stevick competed in his first-ever open event at the NAIAs and posted a career-best throw in the javelin, finishing seventh with a heave of 200’ 9” for the Cougars’ first 2 points of the meet while becoming only the ninth Cougar ever to eclipse 200 feet.

“It felt so easy coming out that I really didn’t think it was that good of a throw,” said Stevick, who got just 1 warm-up toss after hurrying over from the decathlon 400, “but I saw it flying out there and started to get excited.”

Parker put in an arduous 5 hours of work that included competing in 6 different events. She is currently second in the heptathlon with a personal-best first-day score of 3,039 points. She PRd (personal-record) in the high jump (5’ 2½”) and the shot put (37’ 0¼”) and opened the day by matching her PR in the 100-meter high hurdles (14.34). However, later in the day, she established a new PR in the open 100 hurdles with a 14.35 to advance into Friday’s semifinals. She momentarily broke from heptathlon high jump competition to run the opening leg of the Cougars’ 4x100-meter relay, which advanced to the next round with a 48.03.

“I was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life,” said Parker. “I was massively shaking, and it was crazy out there, running from the high jump to the 4x1, changing shoes just in time to get in the blocks, run the race and then return to the heptathlon. But I’m not tired. I’m not sore. Nothing hurts, which is rare for me. This was a pretty good day. I’d give it about an 8.5 on a scale of 10.”

“My goal is to hang onto second place, to be so far ahead of the third-place person heading into the 800 tomorrow that I can’t be caught. If I continue this pattern, I should be okay.”

In other event finals held Thursday, junior Erin Dwyer set a personal record in the hammer with a throw of 158’ 2” but it wasn’t enough to get into the 9-woman finals. Likewise, freshman Elizabeth Schwartz PR’d in the pole vault, but she was 1 of 11 girls to clear 11’ 5¾” and finished 14th overall. Fellow freshman Shedrick Griggs was 15th in the men’s javelin with a throw of 185’ 6”.

The remaining portions of day 1 of the 3-day championship meet featured numerous Cougars advancing out of the prelims in several running events.

Senior John Pfeil used a personal-best time of 3:54.74 in today’s 1500-meter prelims to join Rono in Saturday’s finals. Prior to winning the 10,000, Rono won his heat of the 1500 with a 3:52.62. Freshman Cedrique Smith is on to the semifinals of the 110-meter hurdles (14.57) and the 400-meter hurdles (53.43) after today’s prelim runs in those events. Junior Garrett Zambrow ran a tactically smart race, moving from last place into third over the final 300 meters to get out of the 800-meter prelims (1:53.71). Junior Forrest Lewton qualified for the men’s steeplechase finals with a PR performance of 9:10.38, the third fastest steeple in school history.

As expected, All-American Jaime Canterbury qualified for the finals of the women’s 1500, running a steady 4:36.85 to move on to the finals. Sophomore Mandy Ross moved on to the 200-meter semis with 25.18 in today’s prelim.

“It was a good day for the Cougars,” said Azusa Pacific men’s head coach Kevin Reid. “We pretty much advanced through the rounds where we needed to. Thursday and Friday always seem to carry a little more pressure – with regard to advancing to Saturday’s finals. You want to be sure not to make a mistake, but you also don’t want to be too cautious either.”

“The marks were solid, and pretty much fell true to expectations. We have set ourselves up to be in the position we want to be in on Friday and into Saturday.”

The championship meet continues Friday (May 22) morning at 9:30 a.m. (CDT) with the continuation of the decathlon. An hour later the heptathlon resumes. The first running event of the day is at 1 p.m.