Cal Track & Field: Mykolas Alekna Dominates the Pac-12 Discus Competition

Cal’s Mykolas Alekna dominated the discus competition at the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships on Sunday, delivering three of the four longest throws in college history to dust the next best athlete in the field by 16 feet.

The sophomore from Lithuania won with a throw of 230 feet, 11 inches (70.40 meters), which ranks second all-time, trailing only his collegiate record of 232-22 (71.00), set two weeks ago at the Big Meet.

Here’s another look at the throw of 70.40m (230-11) from Mykolas Alekna, which broke his own meet record and earned him a second straight Pac-12 discus title!!

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— Cal XC/Track & Field (@CalTFXC) May 14, 2023

Senior Skyler Magula won the men's vault for the Bears with a clearance of 17-11 1/4 (5.47), with teammates Tyler Burns and Jonathan Pelusi finishing third and sixth.

Cal women’s 4x100 relay team of Jada Hicks, Jordyn Grady, Makhaila Mills and Aysha Shaheed broke the program record with a second-place finish of 43.81 seconds. They eclipsed the year-old Cal standard of 43.99.

Freshman Carolina Visca, a native of Rome, Italy, finished second in the women’s javelin on Friday with a career-best and school-record 176-10 (53.91). She twice broke her record in the meet, topping her previous best 171-11 (52.41).

The Cal men climbed to fourth place in the team standings with 82 points, their highest finish at the conference meet since taking fourth in 2008. Washington won its first conference team title ever (151 points), edging USC (137) and ending Oregon’s 15-year championship run. The Ducks wound up sixth.

Cal’s women’s wound up in sixth place with 60 points. Oregon defending its women’s crown with 158.5 points, easily outdistancing USC.

Alekna broke his own year-old meet record and, remarkably, now owns 11 of the 12 longest throws in college annals. He recorded five of those marks on Sunday at Walnut, Calif.

*** Here is the updated all-time NCAA leaders list, with Alekna dominating:

Alekna 232-11
Alekna 230-11 (Sunday)
Alekna 227-11 (Sunday)
Alekna 226-5 (Sunday)
Alekna 225-6
Roje Stona, Arkansas 225-3 (Saturday)
Alekna 224-5
Alekna 224-3
Alekna 223-5 (Sunday)
Alekna 222-9
tie.Alekna 222-1
Alekna 222-1 (Sunday)

Teammate Iffy Joyner was fourth in the discus at 198-3 (60.43).

Elsewhere in field event action, NCAA leader Anna Purchase of Cal by way of Great Britain, placed second at 224-4 (68.38), behind Oregon’s Shelby Moran, who threw 226-3 (68.96).

Cal junior Ivar Moisander of Falun, Sweden, was third in the men’s hammer throw with a career-best mark of 227-5 (69.32) that improves his own No. 3 all-time Cal mark.

Amari Turner was third in the women’s pole vault at 13-11 1/4 (4.25), Yan Hei Lai was fourth in the women’s high jump at 5-10 (1.78), Jai Williams was fourth in the men’s high jump at 6-9 (2.06), and Ijeoma Uche was fourth in the women’s long jump with a personal-best of 20-8 1/2 (6.31) that elevates her to No. 5 on Cal’s career chart.

Shaheed, the anchor to the women’s 4x100 relay, ran a personal-best time of 11.32 in the Saturday prelims of the 100, moving to No. 3 on Cal’s all-time list.

Hicks, also a member of that relay, finished fourth in the 100 hurdles at 13.28 a day after clicking 13.17 in the prelims to improve her own No. 3 all-time mark at Cal.

The Cal men fared well in the 110 hurdles, led by Di’Niko Bates, who was third with a time of 14.10. Riley Hunt (14.31) and Hakim McMorris (14.42) were fifth and sixth. Garrett MacQuiddy finished fifth in the men’s 1, 500 at 3:44.75.

*** Meanwhile, former Cal star Ezinne Abba ran the second leg on the 4x100 relay for Texas, which won the Big 12 title in 41.89, which leads the NCAA this season and is No. 2 in the world. Abba also ran a personal best of 11.04 to finish third in the 100 meters as the Longhorns won the Big 12 women's team title.

Cover photo of Cal sophomore Mykolas Alekna by Jed Jacobsohn

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo