Skip to main content

Relays going for gold at Penn

The Cougars 4x100m relay team is milliseconds away from the fastest time in the country. At the Penn Relays they might take that crown.
To win at the Penn Relays means to win at the oldest track and field competition in the United States. Over 100,000 people will be in attendance at Franklin Field when the Cougar track and field team attends the Penn Relays this weekend. Head coach Leroy Burrell looks to lead his athletes to championships on the same stage where he set the 100m record back in 1990.
As with all track meets, the relays dominate the weekend. The men's 4x100m relay team currently has the second best time in the country. At the Mt. SAC relays, the team of senior Cameron Burrell, sophomores Mario Burke and Jacarias Martin and junior Eli Hall-Thompson ran 38.59s, second only to Louisiana State University's 38.57s.
The Cougars are confident they will be competing for a national title in the relays this June. Winning at Penn is just one more step toward that goal.
"To finally get the group we've been wanting to get on the track in the 4x100 together (and) to open up at 38.59s was really good," Coach Burrell said. "We ran 38.44s at the NCAA meet last year. We're basically a hairs breadth away from that in April."
The Penn Record in the event stands at 37.90s, set by Usain Bolt and the Jamaican national team in 2010. The Cougars are a long way from breaking that record, but they should be favored to win the event. Most of the top relay teams will not be at Penn, leaving the door open for the Cougars to improve their national time.
Going solo
The members of the relay team will also be competing individually in the 100m. Burell, Burke and Hall-Thompson will be joined by sophomores John Lewis III and Cameron Prejean, the most competitors for any single event. This is an important event for the Cougars as they have only two athletes that would qualify for the NCAA West Regionals if the season ended today.
Burrell and Lewis III currently rank No. 16 and No. 17 in the NCAA West with times of 10.26s and 10.27s respectively. The Cougars need to use this meet to get more guys with top national times and have them primed for the conference championships.
The other relay
Though not as flashy as the 4x100m, the Cougars currently have the No. 10 time in the 4x400m relay. At the Texas Relays the team of Burke, sophomores Raymund Clarke and Amere Lattin and junior Trumaine Jefferson won their event with a time of 3:04.38s.
The 4x400m is often overlooked at the meet, but given the Cougars success in the event, their athletes are excited to run and are aiming at bringing home gold.
"We've got a lot of goals as a team," Burke said. "We're going to win the 4x100, 4x200, the shuttles hurdles and individual races. Coach Burrell said we're trying to get at least five medals so we should be fine."
----------
Photo courtesy of UH Athletics

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eli Hall-Thompson, 2017 Track Athlete of the Meet

At the 2016 American Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships, LeShon Collins was named the Track Athlete of the Meet after he won the 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay. That year the Cougar men won the conference title by a total of 55 points. This year the Cougars won by 44.50 points, 40 of which came from the contribution of junior sprinter Eli Hall-Thompson. Hall-Thompson, the NJCAA national champion, started championship Sunday on the anchor leg for the men's 4x100m relay. Along with junior Cameron Burrell and sophomore's Mario Burke and Jacarias Martin, the four won the race in a meet record 38.70s, a whole second faster than the runners up Connecticut. Then in the individual sprinting events, Hall-Thompson came into the final with the fastest 100m and 200m preliminary times. In the 100m he ran 10.11s and in the 200m he ran 20.40s. In the 100m final, running into a headwind, he nearly matched his preliminary time with a run of 10.19s. His time wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Burke, Hall-Thompson blazing trail to London

Of the Cougars competing at their respective countries track and field championships this weekend, sophomore Mario Burke and junior Eli Hall-Thompson have punched their tickets to the IAAF World Championships in London this August. Mario Burke became the Barbados national champion in the 100m by running 10.12s in the final on Saturday. He followed up that performance with a time of 20.60s in the 200m Sunday evening. Burke’s time placed him in third place. For Burke, his qualifying for Worlds is the culmination of goals he set at the start of the season. After medaling for Barbados in consecutive summers at the U-20 level, the 2015 CARIFTA Games and 2016 IAAF U20 World Championships, it was Burke’s goal to represent his country at Worlds. Burke had already helped Barbados qualify for Worlds in the 4x100m earlier this year at the IAAF World Relays. There Barbados finished second behind Team USA. With the experience of competing at both the Indoor and Outdoor NCAA Cha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chasing Bolt

As a boy growing up in Barbados it would have been impossible to avoid following the success' of Usain Bolt. The Jamaican sprinter has captured the world's imagination for the last nine years and is arguably the greatest sprinter of all time. Bolt announced that the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London would be his final competition, so everyone in the track & field world is waiting to see if someone can beat Bolt in his last race. Among those vying for Bolt's crown is Barbados' own Mario Burke. The rising junior for the Cougars has been getting primed for international competition these last two years. After missing out on the Olympics last summer, Burke is ready for his first senior level international meet. Burke punched his ticket to London by becoming the Barbados 100m national champion with a time of 10.12s. This after a season where Burke not only found success in the relay, helping the Cougars win the NCAA 4x100m national championship, but indivi...
Post a Comment
Read more