Ex-Crater star Carson Le Bel clears meet’s best mark in six years at 16 feet, 6 3/4 inches in pole vault

ASHLAND — Day 1 of the Cascade Collegiate Conference Track & Field Championships was lucrative business as usual for Southern Oregon’s Carson Le Bel, Frankie Maciel and Abi Stevens.

Le Bel became a back-to-back pole vault champion, Maciel turned in his third consecutive CCC runner-up finish, and Stevens kept racking up points at a record pace to lead the Raiders with all-conference efforts on Friday at Raider Stadium.

Le Bel, a junior All-American from Central Point, won his second consecutive pole vault title by clearing 16 feet, 6 ¾ inches — the best mark at the meet in six years and the third-best in the NAIA this season. It was nearly 14 inches higher than the bar he cleared to capture last year’s championship, and he got it on his first attempt after having already left the rest of the field behind on his previous try at 16-0 ¾. He now has the No. 2 spot on SOU’s all-time list to himself.

Maciel, after placing second in both the 1,500- and 5,000-meter races a season ago, did it in the 1,500 again by hitting the finish line in 3 minutes, 52.76 seconds. He climbed two spots on the leaderboard over the last lap and came in a beat behind champion Daniel Butler (3:52.11) of College of Idaho.

Maciel, a senior from Salinas, Calif., will get another chance to break through for a title as the top seed in Saturday’s 5K, a race that will feature four automatic NAIA Championship qualifiers.

Stevens, meanwhile, earned the 10th and 11th All-CCC honors of her career for the Raider women. After winning the conference’s heptathlon championship last month, she placed second in the 100 hurdles (14.82) and third in the long jump (18-4 ¼). She’d never previously placed higher than fifth in the hurdles and was 10th a season ago.

The senior from West Allis, Wis., will be in action again as the No. 2 seed in Saturday’s high jump. She has already accounted for 24 of SOU’s 38 women’s points and is up to 95 points in her career at the meet.

Four more Raider women contributed to the total. In the pole vault, Sydney Perkins (11-3 ¾) placed fourth; in the 1,500, Alyssa Johnson (4:43.27) and Cammeo Ramirez (4:43.38) were fifth and sixth, respectively; and in the hammer, Ilyhia Greely (153-0) took seventh.

For the Raider men, the 4×400 relay team of Dylan Heath, Keith Sorenson, Isaiah Hidalgo and Trey Lucas tacked on two points with a seventh-place finish in a season-best time of 42.51. Asher Tatsumi clocked a PR in the 10K, placing 10th in 32:56.24.

Action concludes Saturday in Ashland.