{"id":86824,"date":"2026-06-10T19:50:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/?post_type=stories&p=86824"},"modified":"2026-06-10T19:50:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:50:13","slug":"a-season-of-signature-performances","status":"publish","type":"stories","link":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/news\/a-season-of-signature-performances\/","title":{"rendered":"A Season of Signature Performances"},"content":{"rendered":"
Eagle standouts portend golden days for track and field.<\/h6>\n

D<\/span>uring both<\/span> their indoor and outdoor seasons this year, Eastern\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s track and field teams have been stacking personal records, climbing all-time program lists, and leaving their coaches sounding unusually bullish about the future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the women\u2019s side, the performances have been nothing short of dazzling. Sprinter Gilana Wollman has been a double threat all season, sweeping the 100m and 200m at a recent home invitational. Judith Koumedzina, meanwhile, has climbed into the top five of EWU\u2019s all-time lists in both events, and is key part of a women\u2019s 4x100m relay squad that has blasted to the No. 2 spot in program history.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Madhvendra
Madhvendra \u201cMaddy\u201d Shekhawat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the hurdles, Jordyn Grady has been on a tear, setting personal bests at consecutive meets while posting a 400m hurdles time that is EWU\u2019s second best ever. \u201cThat school record is going down soon,\u201d says Erin Tucker, Eastern\u2019s director of track and field and cross county. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then there is Lexi Meyer, who perhaps delivered the signature performance of EWU\u2019s season: an 800m effort at the OSU High Performance Invite that didn\u2019t just break her own school record \u2014 it obliterated it by nearly two full seconds.<\/span><\/p>\n

The men have been equally compelling. Sprinter Kris Phennicie has vaulted to Eastern’s No. 2 all-time in the 100m rankings, while Enoch Okoh, his frequent relay partner, holds the No. 4 spot. Distance runner Owen Higgins quietly moved into second place all-time in the 800m, and thrower Cort Gebbers has Tucker promising seismic events in the discus circle. \u201cCort is about to unload something crazy,\u201d he says. \u201cStay tuned.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If EWU\u2019s season has a subplot that transcends the conference standings, it belongs to Madhvendra \u201cMaddy\u201d Shekhawat, a senior sprinter, hurdling specialist and two time All Big Sky athlete from Jaipur, India. Since his breakout season in 2025, Shekhawat has been turning heads on two continents. At Eastern, he\u2019s been virtually unbeatable in the 60m hurdles, winning at every meet he has entered this season and posting consistent times that have India\u2019s growing number of track and field fans paying close attention. <\/span><\/p>\n

The stakes are clear. Shekhawat\u2019s personal best of 13.70 seconds in the 110m hurdles sits just a few hundredths of a second from the Asian Games qualification standard \u2014 a gap that sounds negligible but is, even for elite sprint hurdlers, a real challenge. His recent successes have been understood, in both Jaipur and in Cheney, as evidence that he is closing it. The future is indeed looking bright.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are moving in the right direction and are on the cusp of putting together a great conference meet,\u201d Tucker says of Maddy and the rest of his up-and-coming team. \u201cWe will fight for a ton of first-place finishes and destroy a few school records along the way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eagle standouts portend golden days for track and field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":86826,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-86824","stories","type-stories","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","stories_categories-athletics","stories_tags-spring-summer-2026"],"acf":{"subheading":"","featured_image_format":"cover","display_byline":false,"display_featured_image":false,"display_date_published":false,"featured_video":"","Links":false,"Resources":false,"page_override_title":"","page_hide_sidebar":false,"page_enable_page_nav":false,"page_persona_bar_default_tab":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/stories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86923,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86824\/revisions\/86923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}