Mechler start championship week for the Cougars

Freshman Nathaniel Mechler started the weekend right for the Cougar track & field team. Hosting the American Athletic Conference Outdoor Championships, Mechler, sophomore Sebastian Russi and seniors Christopher Morales and Emiliano Troitino were the first Cougars to perform as competitors in the men's decathlon.

Mechler came into the weekend with the No. 2 best score in the conference, 7255 points, behind only Alex Bloom of Cincinnati. Mechler, Bloom and Connecticut's Patrick Meyer all had points in the 7000 range. The opportunity was there for all three to hit 7500 and automatically qualify for the NCAA national championships.

The day started with the 100m dash and Mechler came out with the fastest time, 10.96s. From there he went on to the long jump competition where he finished fifth with a best 6.83m jump. Morales came in sixth with a 6.58m jump.

The two once again finished fifth and sixth respectively in the shot put. Mechler had a best 12.26m throw while Morales threw 12.05m, both throws came on their final throw. Troitino and Russi only managed to come in eighth and ninth.

Russi had his best performance of the decathlon so far with a third place finish in the high jump. While Mechler topped out at 1.83m, Russi kept finding a way to fight. On three occasions it came down to his final attempt.

Against Bloom and Meyer, Russi tied with South Florida's Raekwon Scott for the third best attempt at 1.95m.

But Mechler finished the day strong with a winning 400m time of 48.60s, almost three whole seconds faster than the runner up Bloom.

At the end of the day Mechler had the top point total for the Cougars at 3799, fourth place. The first day was by far the hardest events for Mechler. As it was at the Indoor Conference Meet, it will all come down to the 1500m run tomorrow.

UPDATE

Mechler started day two with a second place finish in the 110H with a time of 14.87s, two one hundredths of a second behind Connecticut's Patrick Meyer.

From there he added another second place finish in the pole vault, reaching a high of 4.70m. This would have been the meet record were it not for teammate senior Christopher Morales winning the event with a vault of 4.90m.

But as it did at the Indoor meet, the 1500m run determined Mechler's final standing. Easily winning the event in 4:26.28s. His performance moved Mechler into second place with 7374 points, 27 points behind Cincinnati's Alex Bloom. Mechler only needed to have run about three seconds faster and he would have won the men's decathlon. As it is he scored 8 valuable points for the men's track & field team on their way to their second straight outdoor conference title.

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