SEARCY, Ark. – The Southern Arkansas track and field program concluded another competitive meet on Saturday afternoon as both the Muleriders and Lady Muleriders finished in second place at the Harding Invitational in Searcy, Arkansas.
The meet scoring was between Southern Arkansas and Harding, but also included individual performers from Arkansas Tech and Hendrix College. The Muleriders scored 62 points, while the Lady Muleriders produced 52 points on the afternoon.
In the women's 100 meter, three Lady Muleriders registered point-scoring finishes as
Dakota Mayr,
Justice Reliford and
Victoria Bridges finished second, third and fifth respectively. Mayr earned SAU three points with a time of 12.87, while Reliford's time of 12.96 added two more points. Bridges recorded the sixth and final point with a time of 13.32.
Bridges also earned SAU a point in the women's 200 meter with a time of 27.74, just four tenths of a second behind teammate
Leah Deberry's two-point scoring time of 27.32.
Kenisha Bryant finished just eight one-hundredths of a second behind the leader with a time of 25.77; a personal best time that scored three of SAU's six points in the event.
Bryant, along with
Leah Deberry and
Maya Taylor finished second, third and fourth, respectively in the women's 400 meter. The three combined for six points as Bryant and Taylor recorded personal best times.
The women's 800 meter saw
Virginia Ney and
Ashley Price pick up a combined three points with a third and fourth place finish respectively. Ney added the lone point for the women in the 1500 meter by finishing in fourth place.
Carli Langley placed second in the women's 5000 meter with her third best time in the event this year, earning three points behind Harding's Ewa Zaborowska, who was recently named the Lone Star Conference's Indoor Athlete of the Year.
The women's 4x100 relay team of Deberry, Bryant, Bridges and Mayr finished in first place, gaining five points with a time of 49.81. The 4x400 relay team of Mayr, Bryant, Price and Deberry finished in second place with a time of 4:10.69; picking up two points for the Lady Muleriders.
The Lady Muleriders dominated in the field as at least one athlete placed in the top three of the scoring competitors in seven of the eight events. Bethany Billings tied her personal best in the women's high jump with a mark of 1.52m finishing in second place overall, but gaining all five first place points. She also gained five points in the triple jump with a mark of 9.68m to finish second overall.
SAU added eight points in the long jump as Reliford and Billings place one and two respectively, while Mayr won the pole vault and earned five points with a mark of 3.05m. Dasha Pettis picked up two points in a pair of events for SAU with a personal best mark of 8.61m in the shot put and a throw of 17.74m, one one-hundredths of a meter off of her personal best throw. Pettis added three more points with a mark of 15.59m in the hammer.
For the men, two athletes registered point-scoring finishes as
Quincy Flowers and
Lake Hight added a total of four points in the men's 100 meter with a second and sixth place finish respectively. Flowers' fourth place finish in the men's 200 meter earned SAU a point.
A pair of Muleriders scored points in the 400 meter as
Elijah Reading earned three points with a time of 51.73, while
Larry Booker added a point with a fourth place time of 52.43.
Kirby Shepherd's personal best time of 1:59.27 earned him second place and Southern Arkansas three points in the 800 meter, while
Jose Guevara bettered his 1500 meter time by three seconds as he registered a time of 4:04.75 in a third place finish that gave the Muleriders a pair of points.
Cody Fox shaved a minute off of his previous best 5000 meter time by logging a 15:47.55 in a fourth place finish that earned SAU two points.
The hurdle events greatly aided SAU as Tremayne Dianzungu and
Marcus Brown combined for 11 points in the 110 and 400 meter hurdles. Dianzungu finished first in the 110 event with a time of 15.83; earning SAU five points, while Brown added three with a second place finish of 15.84. Third and fourth place finishes respectively in the 400 meter hurdles gave SAU three additional points.
A pair of men's relay teams produced a pair of points as the 4x100 meter relay team (Bazzelle, Flowers, Hight and Linnear) finished third with a time of 44 seconds. A time of 3:30.62 in the 4x400 meter (Lane Wood, Booker, Dianzungu and Reading) was good enough for a second place finish.
Michael Bazzelle joined Brown in the wind-aided long jump as the duo finished third and fourth to give SAU three points. Brown won the triple jump event with a mark of 12.22m, while
Aaron Linnear finished in second with a mark of12.09m, a personal best, as the two combined for eight points.
Tanner Crutsinger bested his previous shot put throw of 12.34m with a mark of 12.49m for a sixth place finish worth a point.
Adrian Thomas' discus-throw of 41.66m earned SAU two points. Malcolm Cambron added a point for the Muleriders in the hammer throw, while Crutsinger added five points in the javelin event with a second place throw of 47.49m.
For complete results from the Harding Invitational, visit
http://harding.macdonaldtiming.com/.
The Muleriders and Lady Muleriders return to action in New Summerfield, Texas, for the East Texas Time Trials on April 10.
