NCAA DIV. III MEN’S TRACK & FIELD - Petkau leaves Crown as UMAC’s top men’s field athlete for 2025

Last year, triple jump was the event Steven Petkau excelled in at the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference’s outdoor track and field championships. This year, it was the long jump that was the highlight. Combined, however, the 2020 graduate of Rib Lake High School won both events at the May 2-3 championships hosted by the University of Minnesota-Morris and closed his track and field career with Crown College as the UMAC’s Field Athlete of the Meet. As part of Crown’s best-ever thirdplace finish in the conference, Petkau won the meet’s award as the top field athlete and Crown sophomore Andrew Deedon was named the Track Athlete of the Meet after he scored 36.5 points with individual wins in the 1,500-meter run and the 3,000-meter steeplechase as well as being part of the winning 4x800-meter relay. “That was fun because, both me and one of my closest friends on the team, Andrew Deedon, won, so that was fun to do that with him. He’s a really good runner. It was fun to win that alongside him.” Petkau won the award over a few worthy candidates. For example, Robert Perry of team champion Martin Luther College was second in the discus, hammer throw and shot put. Earl Foster of secondplace UW-Superior set a meet record in the javelin and was fourth in discus. Samuel Plocher of Martin Luther and Isaac Weiers of North Central (Minn.) both set conference records in the high jump at 2.01 meters (6 feet, 7 inches). But Petkau’s two wins got the vote. He defended his triple jump title of a year ago with a distance of 13.68 meters (44 feet, 10.75 inches), well ahead of runner-up Arthur Robinson of Martin Luther’s 12.99 meters (42-7.5). The big story for Petkau was his Friday evening in the long jump competition, where he got to 6.52 meters (21-4.75), a personal-best by nearly a foot, and just enough to beat Robinson, who hit 6.45 meters (21-2). “I didn’t really focus on long jump,” Petkau said. “I really only did long jump to help with my triple jump. I think part of it was I just didn’t come in with any expectations. “I felt good that day,” he added. “One of my first jumps was a PR (6.34 meters). That kind of set the tone and got the adrenaline going and then I just thrived off that. I think that helped me jump further. I would say that was the high point of the year for me, PRing in long jump and winning the conference meet that I wasn’t supposed to win.” Prior to the UMAC meet, Petkau had gotten to 6.25 meters (20-6.25), good for third at the April 26 Drake Alternative meet and 6.09 meters (19-11.75) at the Carleton Relays April 19. He was fifth in last year’s conference meet at 6.27 meters (20-7). The irony is last year’s conference win in the triple jump is what drove Petkau’s goal-setting for this spring. With one more year of college eligibility due to the Covid pandemic of 2020-21, Petkau, a WIAA Division 3 ninth-place finisher at state for Rib Lake as a junior in 2019, has always felt that is his best event and he was aiming to better his 2024 conference title distance of 14.24 meters (46-8.75). Last year’s distance ranked within the NCAA Division III’s top 40. “I got off to a late start because I didn’t know if I was going to do track until mid-January,” Petkau said. “I did not jump well early in the season because I had to train through those first few meets. I was lifting the day before and after meets to kind of make up for the time lost.” Petkau finished second in the UMAC’s indoor championships at 13.17 meters (432.5). His distances steadily crept upward as the outdoor season progressed. He hit 13.83 meters (45-4.5) at the Drake Alternative, but wasn’t quite able to duplicate that at the conference meet. That left Petkau with some mixed feelings about the meet overall. “At the conference meet, I came in seeded third or fourth and I ended up winning conference in long jump,” he said. “I PR’d by like a foot. So that was fun to do that. I still won triple jump in conference. I just didn’t jump very well so I wasn’t overly excited about how I performed. I did enough but still not enough for where my expectations were at. “But I’m very grateful for the season I had and just being able to compete again. Throughout three years of track at Crown, I had never podiumed in long jump, indoor or outdoor. So to come into that and take first was a surprise. It was fun to do that.” Petkau finished his collegiate career on a better note, taking fifth in the triple jump at the 2025 National Christian College Athletic Association Outdoor Championships, held May 7-9 in Columbia, S.C. He hit 13.83 meters again and bumped up significantly from the 10th seed he held coming into the meet. He also qualified in the long jump, but didn’t compete, wanting to solely focus on triple jump. “I came in a little nervous,” he said. “Throughout my three years of competing in the triple jump, I had never missed finals. I think the worst I had ever taken was eighth place. I came in determined just to make finals so that I could say that I had never missed finals for triple jump. I ended up doing that. I jumped what I was seeded at. It was a fun way to end my career and my season.” Petkau’s three-year run as a triple jumper at Crown was impressive. In 33 meets –– 17 indoors and 16 outdoors –– he finished in the top five 29 times. He was in the top three 21 times and added 13 seconds and six firsts, the most memorable of which, of course, was last year’s UMAC title. “It was a pretty big PR,” Petkau said. “I had never felt that much adrenaline ever in my life. I think my best coming into that meet was 13-5.9. My first jump went 13-8. So it was the same thing as long jump this year. Right from that point, my adrenaline was just going. I kind of thrived off of that and I just jumped kind of out of my mind because of that adrenaline. That was pretty exciting. I replay that day in my head a lot because it was just such a fun atmosphere to jump in.” Petkau’s collegiate career started with two years of basketball at Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque, Iowa, where he did well, averaging 14.5 and 13.7 points per game his freshman and sophomore years. Emmaus does not have a track and field program. Working as a counselor at Forest Springs after that second year, Petkau took a sudden turn. “I was just looking through my phone during a rest hour with the kids,” he said. “I was looking through my camera roll and I found a picture of me triple jumping. I was like, ‘I miss doing that and I want to do that again.’ That was on a Friday. I texted the basketball coach at Crown because I had a connection with him and started talking to him about the track team. That Saturday, the day after, I applied and committed to going to Crown. It was a really quick turnaround.” It’s a decision he hasn’t regretted. Plus Crown gave him an opportunity to pursue his new sporting passion, golf. He competed on the Polars’ mens team the past two seasons. While the 2024-25 season was a struggle, he had a solid 2023-24 season, that included an individual win with a 78 in his first meet, a dual meet with Macalaster. He shot rounds of 79, 90 and 77 to tie for 13th in the UMAC Championship held Oct. 5-7, 2023 at Pebble Creek Golf Club in Becker, Minn. “I wasn’t a golfer growing up,” Petkau said. “My dad (Pat) and brother (Daniel) were and they tried to get me involved in it. I never got into it too much. In May of 2021, a light just went off in my head and I love golf now. I got addicted to it super fast. I started taking it seriously in 2021 and then it kind of just escalated from there.” Petkau graduated a year ago with a degree in sports management and took master’s courses while competing this school year. Currently working at Golf Galaxy in Plymouth, Minn., he’s hoping to find a career that involves golf. He also spent time this spring coaching triple, long and high jump at Holy Family, a small high school in Victoria, Minn. He’s the second of his family to compete at Crown College, located in St. Bonifacius, Minn. His sister Sarah was a softball pitcher there from 2013-16. His brother Daniel also was a multi-sport, multi-school college athlete, competing with UW-La Crosse track and field in 2012 and the University of Northwestern’s basketball and football teams afterwards.