St. Peter, Minn. – Although he competed just twice over the month of March, Gustavus Adolphus senior track and field athlete Cameron Clause (Mankato, Minn.) certainly made the most of those two competitions. Taking part in the MIAC Championships and NCAA Championships on back-to-back weekends in the heart of 2014’s third month, Clause’s performances and accolades earned him the title of Gustavus Male Athlete-of-the-Month for March.
At the final MIAC Indoor Track and Field Championship Meet of his collegiate career, Cameron Clause set the tone for the weekend by taking gold in the heptathlon with a score of 5,088. He edged second place finisher Max Dunne of St. Thomas by just 58 points after winning two individual races and finishing inside the top three in six of the events. He won the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.79 and 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:41.20, added second place finishes in the long jump (21’ 5.5”), high jump (6’ 0.75”), and pole vault (14’ 11”), and tallied a third place run in the 60-meter dash (7.28).
Not only was Clause the first Gustie to win the MIAC heptathlon since Jared Hokenson did so in 2006, but he also broke his own school record and MIAC record in the process. Clause shattered his 2013 score of 4,912 and topped the old MIAC record of 4,881, which was set by Saint Mary’s Rob Friendt in 2005.
To go along with his victory in the heptathlon, Clause also finished runner-up in the pole vault after going over the bar at 15-feet 1.50-inches.
In the 2014 MIAC Men’s Indoor Track and Field Awards handed out following the conference championships, the Mankato, Minnesota product received fitting accolades for his efforts. He was named the MIAC’s Outstanding Indoor Field Athlete thanks to his versatility and received the MIAC’s Performance-of-the-Meet award for his heptathlon. Clause is the first Gustavus male athlete to appear in the MIAC’s post-meet awards since 2010 when Max Hanson was named the Outstanding Track Athlete and earned the award for Outstanding Performance-of-the-Meet.
Clause rode the momentum into the 2014 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships held March 14-15 at the University of Nebraska’s Devaney Sports Center in Lincoln. Over the course of two-day meet, the senior scored a total of 5,065 points to finish fourth overall in the heptathlon and earn All-America honors for the second consecutive year.
His top showings of the event came in the 1,000-meter run and the pole vault where he finished second in both. He crossed the finish line in 2:39.42 in the 1,000-meter to score 880 points and went over the bar at 15-feet 1-inch for 790 points. He also finished ninth in the 60-meter hurdles (8.69, 816 pts.), 11th in the 60-meter dash (7.31, 775 pts.), high jump (5’ 11.25”, 636 pts.), and long jump (20’ 7.75”, 650 pts.), and 15th in the shot put (34’ 6.75”, 518 pts.).
With his fifth place showing in the heptathlon (4,912 pts.) at the 2013 NCAA Championships, Clause became the first Gustie to ever receive All-American status in the event. He is Gustavus’s first repeat All-American since Luke Speltz, who earned the distinction in the weight throw in 2002 and 2003.