The big news from Marquette’s weekend at the 2026 Big East Outdoor Track & Field Championships technically isn’t news, not in the category of “OH WOW, LOOK AT THE THING WE DID NOT EXPECT!” as news. Far from it, as Riley Ward followed through on her 3.5 meter lead from the rest of the season and won the Big East women’s javelin title on Saturday.
Ward already threw a distance that would have won the title on her second attempt of the day, getting to 44.53 meters. DePaul freshman Ashleigh McArdle ended
up in second place at 43.61 and was the only competitor to also clear 43 meters. Still, better safe than sorry, and Ward closed out her attempts with a 46.21 meter throw that goes in the book as the official championship distance. MU’s Tessa Hollander joined Ward in recording points in the event, although she didn’t quite hit her second-best in the conference best throw of the season. Hollander ended up in fifth place, clearing a distance of 40.23 meters.
On the women’s side, Marquette’s next best competitor after Ward and Hollander was Ally Broaddus. The sophomore finished fourth in the women’s hammer throw and fifth in the discus to record points in both events for the Golden Eagles. All told, Marquette finished seventh as a team in the women’s meet, totaling up 46 points to land between Georgetown at 65 and Butler at 24.
The men’s team finished fifth with a total of 89.5 points, falling just short of Villanova in fourth place with 91 points. They had five top three finishes in the meet, led by two second place finishes in field events. Mason Cornwell wrapped up his freshman year of competition by clearing 4.60 meters in the pole vault, while Henrik Rosario ended up second in the long jump with a distance of 6.81 meters. In the high jump, Russell Czerwinski and John Pitta finished tied with each other for third with a height of 1.96 meters. MU’s only top three finish in running events came courtesy of Andrew Klopcic, who had a time of 52.34 seconds in the 400 meter hurdles final. Klopcic cut more than a second off of his qualifying time in the final to get MU six points in the event.
MU had a notable finish outside the top three in the men’s 4×400 meter relay. The team of Bobby King, Frankie McGee, Andrew Klopcic, and Blake Frea compiled a time of 3:10.74, which landed them in fourth for the meet but broke the school record in the event! That topped the time of 3:11.07 set in 2000, and I would imagine that those guys went into the meet with the goal of taking down the record. They had a time of 3:11.73 at the Georgia Tech meet back on April 18, so clearly cutting seven-tenths of a second was on the table for them.
The official team press release on the results from Saturday says that the 2026 outdoor season is over after the conference championships, which seems to indicate that no one on the team had a performance this season that will qualify them for NCAA regionals this year. In addition to ending the 2026 outdoor track and field season, that also brings an end to the 2025-26 Marquette athletic calendar. The next time we’re going to see someone pulling on the blue and gold for a competition that counts…. well, I’m not sure when that’s going to be, because the only fall contest that’s officially announced is Marquette volleyball’s season opener against Texas at Fiserv Forum on August 24th. Might get some soccer before then, but I guess we’ll have to wait to find out…..
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