Zaprianov shines in heptathlon debut to close out fall semester
DAVENPORT, Iowa - Closing out the final indoor meet of the 2025 portion of the 2025-26 season with their first multi meet of the year, the Clarke University track and field teams posted plenty of positive results at the St. Ambrose University hosted Finals Week Invite on Thursday and Friday.
As the results went final, the team scores saw the Pride earn a fourth place finish for the men and a fifth place finish for the women with both teams posting a pair of first place finishes, led by a trio of freshmen, most notably the first place heptathlon finish for Nick Zaprianov.
The Lebanon, Conn. native was the lone multi-athlete to compete in either the heptathlon or pentathlon for CU on Thursday and Friday as he would earn a top-three finish in six of the seven events, capping off Thursday's portion with a second place in the high jump (1.67m), then went onto Friday's three events with more second place finishes in the 60-meter hurdles (9.33 seconds) and pole vault (3.60m) before winning the 1,000-meter run with a final time of 2:58.79 to finish at 4,211 overall points in the heptathlon to win the event by just six points.
Those 4,211 points, adjusted to 4,235 based off of track size, put Zaprianov in the 10th spot nationally towards qualification to the NAIA Championship where the top 16 heptathlon scores earning a spot at the national meet in Gainesville, Fla. on Mar. 5-7.
Overall, the Pride scored points 16 other times outside of the heptathlon with the other three first place finishes came from De'Aijah Tullis and Gracee Roig on the women's side then Ja'kobe Kizer on the men's side with Roig producing a repeat performance in the triple jump, just coming up short of her first place distance from last week putting up a 10.63-meter jump on Friday while Tullis won the high jump for the second-straight week, improving on her 1.50-meter clearance from last week to clear 1.61 meters on Friday, just 0.05 meters away from a national qualifying mark, then Kizer won the triple jump on the men's side with a 13.87 best jump.
A usual suspect scoring event for Clarke track and field, the pole vault produced four point scorers, three on the women's side led by Evelyn Folkedahl's third place finish at 2.85 meters while Malia Beich cleared the bar at 2.70 meters and Keara Arnold vaulted over at 2.40 meters as that trio combined for 12 points for the women's team, while Keifer Landes earned a second place finish in the men's pole vault with a 4.40-meter clearance.
The men's mile run was the last even to produce multiple scorers as Chesney Capron finished third at a 4:32.41 time ahead of Charles Juntunen III running a 4:38.68 for an eighth place finish as the track was where a majority of the remainder of the scoring came from on both sides.
Rounding out the women's scoring was Tullis also posting a third place in the 60-meter hurdles with a 9.62 time in the finals while Jaycie Franco earned a fifth place in the 3,000 meters at 10:48.03, then Isabelle Matthews was the final scorer for CU at a 27.96 200-meter dash time, good for ninth place.
The remainder of the men's scoring from the track had John Raven producing a 51.87-second time in the 400 meters for fifth place, Cord Nietert running a fifth place 1:24.75 in the 600 meters, Bryce Kondos finishing in third place in the 1,000 meters with a 2:40.48, and Zaprianov, Joshua Musonda, Jake Etherington, and Kevin Hategekimana combining for a third place time in the 4x400 meter relay with a 3:27.61 time.
Full meet results can be found here: https://milesplit.live/meets/720650/events
Clarke track and field will head into winter break where they will return in January to compete at St. Ambrose again on Saturday, Jan. 17 at the Bumble Rumble in Davenport, Iowa.