Lincoln (MO) University successfully defended its women’s title and
St. Augustine’s College fell one-point short of the men’s championship
at the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
The Lincoln women posted a four-point win over second-place Adams State, while
Abilene Christian won its’ third straight men’s championship on
Saturday at Mt. San Antonio College’s Hilmer Lodge Stadium. Cal Poly
Pomona hosted the three-day event. Both the men’s and women’s divisions
came down to the final event of the day, the 4x400 relay.
Lincoln won the women’s 4X400m relay in 3:39.23 with the quartet of
Lileith Sims, Marlene Smith, Kelly
Marshall and Moya Thompson. The team immediately
broke into chants of “back-to-back, back-to-back.”
Shandria Brown repeated in both the women’s 100m and 200m, which went
a long way toward pushing Lincoln to the national title. In addition to anchoring
the 4X400m relay, Thompson won the 400m dash.
Earlier in the day, the Lady Tiger quartet of Simmy George,
Brown, Smith and Thompson captured the 4X100m relay.
St. Augustine’s men entered the final event down by five points. The
Falcons won the 4X400m relay in 3:05.61. Despite being edged by North Dakota
State (.05 seconds), ACC’s third place finish gave them the title by
a scant one-point margin.
Ironically ten years ago in Raleigh, St. Aug beat Abilene Christian by one
point (118-117) to pick up its sixth consecutive national championship in 1994.
“I’ve been planning every day for (winning a third straight title),” Abilene
Christian head coach Jon Murray said. “St. Augustine’s has a very
good program and it looked like we had our work cut out, but our team did a
great job and kept improving. We got a very pleasant surprise in the men’s
200m (second-place finish from Marvin Bien-Amie). You’ve got to love
it when you have guys like that. You can take it to the bank and build a foundation
upon it. We’ve come to rely on our triple jump crew here for the past
several years.”
That group wracked up major points Saturday. Yevgen Pashchenko won the event
with a mark of 52-7 ¼, while Ben Washington was third with a mark of
50-10 ¼. Abilene Christian also got a pair of victories from the Bernard
Manirakiza, who won the 800 meters (1:50.23) and the 1500m (3:44.98).
Bershawn Jackson, the standout freshman 400 meter hurdler from St. Augustine’s
won his specialty in 49.62, edging teammate and defending champion Adrian
Findlay,
who was second in 49.82. Jackson set a meet record in Thursday’s preliminaries,
rounding the oval in 48.50.
St. Aug also got second and third-place finishes from Enrique Llanos and Chris
Stephens in the 110m hurdles (Tarmo Jallai of Texas A&M Kingsville won
the event in 13.67) and a 3-4-5 finish in the 400m dash from Nathaniel
McKinney, Wilan Louis and Jamaal Torrance.
In addition to Lincoln’s five national women’s titles, Clark
Atlanta’s
Nikki Hill won the high jump and Fort Valley State’s Ebony McMath won
the 100m hurdles to bring the HBCU women’s total titles to seven.
Joining St. Aug’s Jackson and the Falcon 4X400m relay team as men’s
champions from HBCUs, were Lincoln’s Lerone Clarke (100m) and Livingstone’s
Jordan Vaden (200m).
Black College Division II Track and Field All-Americans
