Eight Cards Medal

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SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Smashing records and setting themselves up for potential appearances at the NCAA Preliminaries, Lamar University had four individuals and the women’s 4×100-meter relay team medal in the Sunday finale of the 2018 Southland Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships.

The day started off with a bang when Migle Muraskaite completed the second half of the women’s heptathlon; she entered the day ranked third through four events after having completed the shot put, high jump, 200-meter dash, and 100-meter hurdles on Saturday.

The freshman from Vilnius, Lithuania, finished 11th in the long jump, losing some ground to front-runner Grace McKenzie from McNeese, but she rebounded by winning the javelin toss with a throw of 147′ 11″, over 16 feet more than second place. McKenzie came in 10th in that event with throw of 105′ 7″, and Muraskaite moved up to second.

The heptathlon came down to the final event, the 800-meter run. McKenzie came in first with a time of 2:12.96, just under three seconds faster than Muraskaite in third at 2:16.64. McKenzie won the heptathlon with a total of 5,619 points and Muraskaite came in second with 5,437. That point total set a new personal and program record for Muraskaite, who had previously smashed the school’s record of 4,695 set by Karen Gibson in 1985 when she scored 5,306 points at the 91st Annual Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays.

The next medal for the Cardinals came in the men’s triple jump. Brian O’Bonna shattered his previous personal best with a mark of 52′ 7.5″ on his fourth attempt. That jump secured second place for the senior from Brampton, On., moving him up to 15th in the nation as of this writing. Javon McCray also had a strong showing for the Cards’ jump squad in the event taking eighth with a mark of 48′ 11″.

Neither medaled but Ju’Vonta Conston (fifth) and Dawson Chumley (sixth) both repped the jump squad well in the men’s high jump; they both hit the 6′ 7.5″ mark with a tie-breaker coming on an earlier jump attempt.

Lamar’s third medal of the day came in the women’s 4×100-meter relay; Thai Williams, Deja Phillips, Dominique Taylor, and Trashauna Hardy raced a school-record 45.42 to take home bronze. Less than a second separated the Cards from first. Their time of 45.52 set a new school record in the event.

Katie Buckley came agonizingly close to a medal for the Cards in the women’s 1,500-meters; she took fourth with a time of 4:40.49, less than four seconds behind third place. Georgia Tuckfield was just a few seconds behind Buckley and took ninth with a time of 4:45.58. Cormac Kelly had a Top 10 finish in the men’s 1,500 as well; he came in seventh with a time of 3:55.95.

Two Cards finished in the Top 10 of the women’s 100-meter hurdles. Meagan Menifee took sixth with a race of 14.19 and Taylor took eighth at 14.27.

Just over a second separated Webster Slaughter from a first-place finish in the men’s 400-meter dash; he ran a time of 47.49 to take fifth in the event.

Williams took Lamar’s fourth medal of the day and third individual medal by running an 11.76 in the women’s 100-meter dash, the second-fastest time of the event; she narrowly beat Sam Houston’s Kenaysia Dixon by one one-hundreth of a second.

Lamar’s final medal came in the final individual event, the men’s 5000-meters. Matthew Arnold followed up his third-place finish in the men’s 3000-meter steeplechase with a second-place finish in the men’s 5K. He ran a time of 15:00.26, just four seconds behind McNeese’s Enrique Soto in first and a full 10 seconds ahead of Jorge Quintero in third. Georgia Tuckfield had a Top 10 showing in the women’s 5000-meters; she took 10th with a time of 18:30.69.

The women’s 4×400-meter relay team of Menifee, Hardy, Kelsie McClenon, and Taeylor Roquemore had a terrific showing in the last Cardinal event of the day, running a 3:45.79 to take fourth place.

Both the Lamar men’s and women’s teams finished in eighth place; the men scored 54.5 points and the women scored 50.

Cardinal student-athletes will have one more opportunity to qualify for the NCAA Preliminaries in the upcoming McNeese Last Chance & Cowboy Elite Mile, which will be hosted in Lake Charles, La., on Friday, May 11 and Saturday, May 12.

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