The Sub 9 Club

At the American Athletic Conference Championship the women track & field team finished seventh with 70 points. Several athletes placed in the top 3 of their respective events, but only one managed to win it. Freshman Samiyah Samuels entered the championships ranked behind junior Tonye'cia Burks in the long jump. But on the day Samuels jumped a championship meet record 6.58m to win the women's long jump. In contrast, Cincinnati's Kellsa Mbah jumped 6.32m in second place, almost an entire foot short of Samuels. Her jump is now No. 8 in the NCAA and No. 2 in the NCAA West, behind only Sydney Conley of Kansas. In addition, Samuels will be running on the 4x100m relay. At the conference meet she ran the anchor leg for the team that finished second with a 44.35s run. World class jumper In the long jump, Burks finished fifth with a 6.04m jump. But she was expected to perform well in the triple jump, her specialty. Burks had opened her season by breaking the...

Eight one-thousandths of a second. Eight one-thousandths of a second were what separated freshman sprinter Brianne Bethel from being a dual conference champion. The international student from the Bahamas entered the American Athletic Conference Outdoor Championship with the goal of helping lead the women to their first conference title in over a decade. Ultimately the women fell short of their goal, but Bethel managed to reach the podium three times over the course of the weekend. Coming into the meet, Bethel was already having a very strong season. She had returned to the Bahamas in April to represent her home country at the IAAF World Relays. There Bethel helped the Bahamas 4x100m relay team qualify for the IAAF World Championships in London this August. So coming into the championship meet, hosted by the Cougars, she was not short of confidence. The meet was a way for her to show she could have success individually as well as on a team. In the 100m preliminary races the C...

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...

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 w...

In 2016 the Cincinnati Bearcats' women’s track & field team won the American Outdoor Championships with a point total of 111. The Cougars only managed to score 66 points and finish eighth. The goal of the coaching staff recruiting wise was to bring in talent that could get the women back to a competitive level. It has been over ten years since the Cougars last won a conference title, but this season they are closer than they have been in years. The women come into the meet with the top times/marks in five events, and top five places in ten events. Their performances have the women believing they have the talent to win their first team championship since 2006. “Quite honestly we’ve got a really strong group,” Head Coach Leroy Burrell said. “We don’t have as much depth of coverage in events, but certainly the group is capable of performing at a high level. So I expect them to fight.” Going back to the indoor season, this year’s class of freshmen have given an e...

Last year the Cougar men were struggling to score points at the American Athletic Conference Outdoor Championship until they ran the sprint events. The Cougars went on to score 94 points in the sprints on their way to a record 203 points. One year later the Cougars are looking to not only continue their dominance in the sprints, but shut out the competition. A year ago the men owned six of the eight athletes in both the 100m and 200m finals. The squads had the top five and top four times respectively as they scored 34 points and 32 points. Now the Cougars’ goal is to own all eight runners in both finals. “There’s no reason why we can’t,” junior Cameron Burrell said. “We have a good group of guys who work really hard and this is what we train for. So we’re going to go and perform to the best of our ability. And if it happens to be six, seven, eight guys in the final then that’s what we’re going to do.” Burrell scored 34 points last year after placing third and second in...

18.88m, that was senior Cameron Cornelius’ first mark of the outdoor season. Almost two months later it is still the top shot put distance in the American Athletic Conference. Now, after missing all of last season due to injury, Cornelius is on the doorstep of qualifying for the NCAA Championships. But before that, Cornelius will have to get through the competition at the American Athletic Conference Outdoor Championships. This meet has been a spot of frustration for Cornelius in his first two seasons as he has yet to win an outdoor shot put title. Now after winning his third indoor title in as many seasons, Cornelius is looking to finally complete the double. “My freshman year and my sophomore year I thought I had it in the bag,” Cornelius said. “I had pretty big throws out there. I thought no one could catch me, I thought I was fine. But in the last rounds they did catch me. So it’s mainly thinking that I could have a two foot PR but it’s still not safe no matter what....