WINONA, Minn. — With three conference champions and eight school records already in the books, Saint Mary's University track and field coach Kirk Nauman wasn't quite sure what other "tricks" the Cardinals had up their sleeves heading into last Saturday's final day of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Indoor Championships.

How about three more school records — and a team record that Nauman can be especially proud of.

"This was just such a fantastic meet — everyone who competed contributed," said Nauman, whose women's team amassed 94 points — the most ever by an SMU track and field team at the conference championships — en route to a school-best fourth-place finish. "We had so many outstanding performances, and to cap it all off with a fourth-place finish (on the women's side) — it's just the frosting on the cake."

Fueled by Ashley Dingels' (Gibbon, Minn.) second pentathlon title in three years on Wednesday, and Maria Roche's (New Prague, Minn.) conference title-winning effort in the 600, the Cardinals found themselves near the top of the MIAC standings.

And, Nauman admits, the view is kind of nice from up there.

"This team had never finished higher than eighth, and for us to grab fourth, that's just awesome," said Nauman, who also got record-setting performances from Roche in the 800 (2:19.16) and Ellen Koranda (Blue Earth, Minn.) in the 3,000 (10:25.75), and from the 4x400 relay team of Autumn Valk (Appleton, Wis.), Dingels, Roche and Emily Bartusek (Albert Lea, Minn.), which placed third overall in 4:03.66 — not to mention a 3-4-5 finish in the shot put from Beth Cleveland (Wausau, Wis. / 38-11 1/2), Amanda Weinmann (Rochester, Minn. / 38-9) and Dingels (38-2). "I thought heading into the meet that we had a chance to crack into the top five, but this performance was above and beyond anything I figured we could do."

Rob Friendt (Ogden, Utah) did most of the damage for the Cardinal men, as the SMU junior compiled 29 of SMU's 30 points on his own in helping the Cardinals to a 10th-place effort.

"Rob's pretty tired right now — he had a busy couple of days," said Nauman of Friendt, who not only won the heptathlon in school and conference record-setting fashion, but also broke, then rebroke his own school records in the long jump (23-2 1/4) and the pole vault (14-11), while equaling his school-record time of 6.8 in the 55. "I'm just so proud of everyone's efforts. This was a great way to close out the indoor season — and a great way to head into the outdoor season.

"Hopefully this year's indoor season is a sign of things to come."