Bobcats place second at Big Sky Track & Field Championship

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Stellar individual performances on Saturday at the 2025 Big Sky Outdoor Track & Field Championships powered Montana State's track and field teams to runner-up team finishes at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California.  

Montana State's women finished second for the seventh consecutive conference meet, a stretch that dates back to the 2022 Big Sky outdoor championship.  

The Bobcat women finished Saturday with 158.5 points, the second-largest total in program history behind only the 176 points scored in 2003—the last year they won the Big Sky title.  

No. 28 Northern Arizona secured their fifth straight team championship on the women's side, scoring 222 points.  

Montana State was head-and-shoulders above the rest of the field, with Montana a distant third scoring 100 points.  

Montana State's men also finished second on Saturday, securing their fifth straight top two finish at the outdoor Big Sky Championships.  

The Bobcats closed with 154 points, their fourth-most at the conference championships in program history.  

Northern Arizona secured the team title, scoring 227.5 points. Third-place Montana scored 107 points, with fourth-place Weber State scoring 77 points.  

Montana State added four event champions on Saturday in Sacramento, with wins in the men's pole vault (Colby Wilson), men's 1,500 meters (Harvey Cramb), men's 4x100 meter relay (Stryder Todd-Fields, Xavier Simpson, Drake Wilkes, Noah Barbery), and men's 4x400 meter relay (Michael Swan Jr., Stryder Todd-Fields, Nash Coley, Jett Grundy)  

Wilson, a redshirt senior from Olympia, Washington, competing in his final Big Sky championship meet, won his fifth conference title in the pole vault.  

On the track in the first event on Saturday, the MSU men's 4x100 meter relay team of Stryder Todd-Fields, Xavier Simpson, Drake Wilkes, and Noah Barbery electrified the crowd with a thrilling race, as Barbery's anchor leg powered the Cats down the final stretch to a win in 40.44 seconds.  

The top five teams all crossed the line within a half second of one another, but it was the Cats who got the lean for the gold—the first men's outdoor 4x100 relay win from Montana State since 2012.  

Less than 20 minutes later, Harvey Cramb pulled off a spectacular victory of his own, winning the men's 1,500 meter crown and de-throning 11-time Big Sky champion Colin Sahlman of Northern Arizona in the process.  

Cramb, a sophomore from Brisbane, Australia, jumped out to the early lead and executed his gameplan to perfection, maintaining an advantage throughout the race and holding off Sahlman's kick with one of his own to secure the gold.  

Cramb, who has run the No. 2 fastest time in school history and ranks No. 28 in NCAA Division I this year, is the first Bobcat champion in the event since Christian Soratos (2015).  

In the final event of the day, the men's 4x400 meter relay closed out the competition in resounding fashion with a gold medal-clinching race.  

With legs run by Michael Swan Jr., Stryder Todd-Fields, Nash Coley, and Jett Grundy, Montana State replicated their win in the event from the 2024 team title-clinching run, with Coley replacing the lap run by Janis Pohl last May in Bozeman.  

Just like last year, it was Grundy on the anchor holding off Montana down the last straightaway to get atop the podium.  

Todd-Fields walked away from Saturday with two gold medals running legs on both relays, adding a sixth-place finish in the 200 meters.  

Up Next

Montana State will send a large contingent of qualifiers to the NCAA West First Rounds, hosted in College Station, Texas, from May 28-31.  

The full list of qualifiers, which include the top-48 marks from both the West and East regions, will be announced on Wednesday.