SALEM, Va. - Following the team's lone event win in the men's high jump thanks to Jahvad McDermott in day one of the Finn Pincus Invitational, Carson-Newman Track & Field had a plethora of Eagles grab first-place honors in the final day of the meet on Saturday at Roanoke College.
Long jumper Samantha Gudger began the day with C-N's first win after she cleared 5.50 meters. Teammate Shelby Reynolds rounded out the top-three in the long jump after she completed a jump of 5.18m. The men also claimed the title in the same event with Kristofer Potts-Howard jumping 7.05 meters. Ray Artybridge also rounded out a top-three spot for the program reaching 6.84m.
Luke Greer broke two school records for C-N in both the mile and the 800-meter run. The Northhampton, England native already held the previous program best times in both events entering the day. The time of 4:20.92 in the mile grabbed the top spot in the event. Three and a half hours later, Greer earned the win in the 800m with a time of 1:57.88.
Caleb Agee rounded out the top-eight in the 800-meter with a time of 2:02.60.
Sprinter Devon Moore second following the semifinal race in the 60m dash after running 6.84 seconds with Lenoir-Rhyne's PJ Lotharp at 6.78. Outside of championship races, the time marks his personal-best for in-season competitions. The time is good enough for a Provisional FAT which caps at 6.88. Moore did not run in the final due to a sore hamstring.
An additional trio of Eagles all ran personal-best times in the event with Toot Johnson coming in at 7.10 seconds followed by Artybridge at 7.14 seconds and DJ Luster at 7.26 seconds.
Tia Davis and Amanda Lowe finished seventh and eighth respectively in the 60m dash semi final race with Davis at 8.01 seconds followed by Lowe at 8.02.
Three C-N throwers finished in the top-13 in the shot put with Logan Pender (13.57m) at No. 10, Trayzel Jureidini-Wyche (13.49m) at No 12. with a new personal-record, and Landon Harrell (13.22m) rounding out the bakers dozen.
Abby Tomkoski earned fourth-place honors in the triple jump for the Eagles after clearing 10.63m.
The aforementioned victory for McDermott followed up with a second in day two as the Brooklyn, New York product took the win in the triple jump with a mark of 14.58m, his second event win of the season. James Wilson grabbed the No. 3 position with a jump of 14.44m.
"There's a lot of great things to be happy about after this weekend," Coach David Needs said. "A lot of kids got personal bests and some first place finishes but as a coach you're looking at a lot to improve at this point. The strength of our meet were the sprints and the jumps this weekebd because you had a lot of top teams involved there.
"What we want to do is continue to get better, get stronger, finish races and finish jumps and there are some things we still need to work on. There are limited opportunities in this sport and you need to take advantage of those. I'm proud of our distance kids too, they put in some hard work and a lot of our throwers got better but we still want improve on some things because the South Atlantic Conference Championships are around the corner."
Skye McCarter finished 10th for C-N in the 3000 meter run crossing the line at 11:23.27 which marks a new career-best as an Eagle by a whole ten seconds.
Coach Needs and his program will now turn their heads to the Buccaneer Invitational slated to take place in Johnson City, Tenn. next weekend from Feb 1-2.
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