One relay team and one individual will represent the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff men’s track and field team in next month’s national championship meet.
UAPB qualified in two events after competing in the NCAA West First Round meet hosted by Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, on Friday.
Each running event featured three heats. The top three finishers in each heat and the next best three times overall qualified to advance to the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, to be held June 11-14.
Individual runners had to qualify for Friday’s quarterfinals during Wednesday’s preliminaries, while there were no preliminaries for the relays.
The UAPB 4×100-meter relay team ran faster on Friday than it did earlier this month when it broke a 37-year-old record at the SWAC Championships.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The Golden Lions finished second in their heat with a season-best time of 38.98 seconds, which was 0.19 seconds faster than their SWAC championship-winning run. They were 0.09 seconds behind USC in the heat and finished with the fifth best time overall out of 24 teams.
UAPB went with senior Dwight Henry, freshman Avindale Smith, senior Jared Sylvester and junior Ross Walrond on Friday. Smith replaced sophomore Jordan Pierre, who was in the lineup which won SWAC gold in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Pierre instead qualified to travel to Oregon as an individual in the 400-meter dash. He finished fourth in the first heat by 0.007 seconds behind UCLA sophomore Gabriel Clement II after both circled the track in 45.75 seconds.
His time was 7th best overall, and Pierre would have finished second in the third heat or third in the second. He improved from 46.04 seconds and 14th overall in the preliminaries on Wednesday.
Walrond ran in the 200-meter dash quarterfinals but failed to qualify after finishing 18th overall and seventh in his heat with a time of 20.61 seconds. That run was a 0.38-second improvement on his time from the preliminaries.
UAPB’s 4×400-meter relay team fell short in the final event of the night. The Golden Lion team of Walrond, Pierre, senior Mohamed Soumare and Sylvester finished sixth in its heat and 16th overall with a time of 3:07.44.