May 15, 2006

CEDAR RAPIDS , IOWA . . . The Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) announced today that University of Dubuque track performer Gregg Wiersema (Morrison, Ill./Morrison) and Loras College track performer Abby Erion (Decorah, Iowa/Decorah) have been named the IIAC Male and Female Athletes of the Week for the period ending Sunday, May 14. The Conference also announced the Performers of the Week for each of the Conference’s three sports in competition during the week.

Men’s Track & Field – Gregg Wiersema, Univ. of Dubuque, Morrison, Ill./Morrison
Wiersema, a senior, was named Most Valuable Performer of the Iowa Conference Championship after scoring 31 of Dubuque’s 58 points in the meet. He won individual titles in the 100- and 200-meter dashes in times of 11.02 and 22.11 seconds, respectively. He ran the anchor leg of the winning 4x100 relay that provisionally qualified for the NCAA Championships with a Carlson Stadium record time of 41.41 seconds. Wiersema also ran the anchor leg of the Spartans’ 4x400 relay team that finished eighth (3:27.01).

Women’s Track & Field – Abby Erion, Loras College, Decorah, Iowa/Decorah
Erion, a junior, was named Most Valuable Performer of the Iowa Conference Championship after placing in the top-five of six events including two NCAA provisional qualifying marks. She PQ’ed in the triple jump with a winning mark of 11.57 meters and the heptathlon with a fourth-place finish of 4,164 points. She also won the long jump (5.21 meters) and finished third in the 400-meter hurdles (1:04.56). Erion was a member of the runner-up 4x400 relay team (4:00.76) and the third-place 4x100 relay team (49.36 seconds).

Baseball – Ryan Nicholson, Coe College, Downers Grove, Ill./North
Nicholson, a freshman pitcher, went 2-0 with a 0.87 earned run average and nine strikeouts in two games of the Iowa Conference Tournament to lead Coe to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1978. He threw a 9-inning complete game against Conference tri-Champion and Tournament #3-seed Wartburg in the opener. He struck out seven batters, allowed seven hits, two walks and two runs (one earned) in the 4-2 victory. In what ended up as the Championship game, Nicholson pitched 1.1 innings of perfect relief to earn the victory in the Kohawks’ 10-8, 11 inning win over #1-seed Simpson. He also had is first career plate appearance, successfully executing a sacrifice bunt that moved the eventual winning run into scoring position while reaching on a throwing error and later scoring an insurance run.

Other Outstanding Weekly Performers
The IIAC also recognized the following outstanding athletic performance from the past week.

• Simpson College senior outfielder James Brown (Des Moines, Iowa/Lincoln) hit .600 (9-for-15) with seven RBI, five runs scored and four walks in four games highlighted by a 5-for-5, four RBI, three runs scored performance in the Storm’s IIAC Tournament opener, a 15-5 8-inning win over Luther.

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