STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford's four-time All-America Harrison Williams headlines the Pac-12 Combined Events Championships at Cobb Track and Angell Field this weekend.
The men's decathlon (10 events) and women's heptathlon (seven events) are Saturday, beginning at noon, and Sunday, at 11 a.m. Attendance and parking are free. Results counts toward the team scoring at the Pac-12 Championships on May 12-13 at the same site.
Williams has placed among the top six in NCAA multi-event competitions four times, including fourth as a freshman and fifth as a sophomore in the decathlon before redshirting last year. In his only previous Pac-12 decathlon, Williams was runner-up to Arizona's Pau Tonnesen in 2015.
In that meet, Williams broke Stanford's oldest record -- Bob Mathias' 1952 Olympic-winning effort of 7,592 points (converted to reflect current scoring tables) -- with 7,679 points. Williams has since broken Stanford multi-event records six times -- four times in the decathlon and twice in the heptathlon. His Stanford decathlon standard is 8,032 from the 2016 NCAA Championships.
Williams comes into the meet with the highest season score – 7,682 at the Bryan Clay Invitational at Azusa Pacific University on April 18-19. It is the ninth-highest score in NCAA Division I this year. Of the 10-man field, four are competing in their first decathlon this season. The highest returning scorer from last year is Colorado's Andrew Ghizzone, who was fifth in 2017 and enters the weekend with the second-highest season score (7,083) behind Williams.
Also competing is Stanford freshman Jack Herkert. He has yet to compete in a collegiate decathlon, but Herkert placed seventh in the heptathlon at the indoor Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships.
Stanford has not had a conference decathlon winner since Travis Clark won the 1994 Pac-10 crown with 6,982.
The heptathlon is headlined by Washington State's two-time champion Alissa Brooks-Johnson, who won in 2015 and 2017. She was sixth in the NCAA outdoors last year and comes in with a personal best 5,803 points and a season best of 5,740, which is the No. 8 score in the NCAA this year. UCLA's Kendall Gustafson is No. 12 at 5,691. Stanford does not have a heptathlete in the field.
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Stanford is set to host the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships on May 5-6 and May 12-13 on Cobb Track and Angell Field. The first weekend, with the multi-event athletes competing, is free to the public. Tickets ($10/adult; $5/student, youth, seniors) are required to watch May 12-13. Fans can save $5 per person by purchasing their tickets online, and in-advance. To secure your tickets for the Championships, visit gostanford.com/pac12track.
