This week's Outdoor Bests
By DON GARRETT
Special Contributor
The Wildcats ventured southeast to Waco last weekend for the Michael Johnson Dr. Pepper Invitational hosted by Baylor University hoping to find mild weather. The Wildcats found winds that rival anything every produced in west Texas - sustained winds of 20-30 miles an hour, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour.
However, the winds abated some in the evening and the ACU performances also improved as the evening continued. In fields made up mostly of NCAA Division I and professional athletes, ACU athletes won two events and had several other runnerup performances going against some of the best track and field athletes in the southwest United States.
The ACU winners were familiar names to Wildcat track fans:
Ramon Sparks winning the triple jump with a jump only one inch behind his all-time best non-wind-aided best (52-5.25),
Nick Jones winning the discus with a toss of 188-6, and
Jessica Sloss winning the hammer throw with a toss of 160-4. In the men's triple jump, freshman Timothy Jones also had a personal record (PR) jump of 51-0.25 that moves him to No. 5 in all of NCAA Division II and sees him improve his PR by almost six feet over his high school best - an amazing improvement under the ACU coaching staff.
The second-place finishes were also Wildcats who are enjoying outstanding seasons - Amanda Ouedraogo improving her PR in the triple jump to 42-5.5, which is the best Division-II jump in the nation; Jones finishing 2nd in the shot put to University of Texas all-America thrower Hayden Baillio with a throw of 58-8.75;
Tyler Fleet finishing 2nd in the hammer throw with his second-best throw of the season at 192-8 and
Amos Sang finishing 2nd in the 1500 with a new PR time of 3:50.33 which moves him to the No. 15 spot on the Division II performance list.
But, the more awe-inspiring runnerup performances came from veteran ACU sprinter,
Desmond Jackson, who finished second in the invitational 100 and 200 against fields made up entirely of D-I and professional runners, with PR times of 10.22 in the 100 and 20.79 in the 200. Both times move Jackson up to the No. 2 position in all of Division II and establishes him as one of the premier sprint talents in the U.S., regardless of division.
Other noteworthy performances for the Wildcats include:
• The men's sprint relay ran the best time for an ACU team in several years with a time of 39.80, moving ACU to the top spot in all of Division II. ACU was fourth place in the race, behind only Texas A&M, Texas and TCU and ahead of UT-Arlington, Sam Houston State, NAIA powerhouse Wayland Baptist and LSC foes Angelo State and Tarleton State.
•
Chloe Susset finishing 3rd in the afternoon B section of the 1500 with a PR time of 4:44.06, only a few seconds off the national provisional qualifying time. Susset also ran well in the 800, missing her PR in that event by a scant one-one/hundredth of a second. In the same 1500 race, long-distance specialist Alyse Goldsmith, who has already provisionally qualified in the 5,000 meter run for the national meet, ran a PR time of 4:46.39 in the 1500.
• Fleet finished 8th in a strong field of discus throwers with his second best distance of the season, 163-6.
• Sparks also moved up the national list in the long jump with a season best of 24-1.5, moving him to 13th in the nation in that event.
The Wildcats will have a small contingent of athletes, mostly jumpers and sprinters, go to the Penn Relays in Philadelphia this coming weekend with other members of the team running at North Texas after the West Texas A&M Relays (scheduled for this weekend) were canceled.
The Lone Star Conference championship meet will be May 6-8 in Stephenville and promises to be one of the most competitive meets in years. Last year, the ACU men barely held off Angelo State to win the league championship, while Angelo State dominated the field to win the women's title on its way to winning the NCAA Division II outdoor national championship. The men's race should once again come down to an ACU-Angelo State battle, while the women's championship race comes down to ACU, Angelo State and an improving Incarnate Ward.
