The Barton Community College men's track and field team added seven new national qualifiers to its list with a big weekend in Canyon, Texas, competing in the Jo Meaker Classic & Multi hosted by West Texas A&M University.
The 3rd ranked Cougars had sixteen Top-10 finishes during the meet, posting 11 personal or season bests with two of those landing on the program's storied Top-10 historical lists.
Week after week, the throwing group for both the women's and men's team seemingly make impacts on the program record book, this week it was a pair of freshmen climbing into the shot put chart.
Christopher Young won the event, marking a program 6th best 18.11m to distant Christopher Crawford's 8th best 17.89m throw, with sophomore Brandon Lloyd, who already has the program's 5th best 18.15m mark, finishing 4th at 16.99m. The trio went 7-10-12 in Friday's hammer throw, Young's personal best 51.22 increasing his national qualifying spot, Lloyd marking a personal best 48.75m to reach national standards, and Crawford's personal best 46.54m coming up short of joining the two on the national stage of the event.
Already qualified in the 100m, Almond Small bettered his time with a season best 10.25 in placing 4th, adding a second event for the national meet by clocking a 20.82 in the 200m to place 5th.
Barton's additional national qualifiers were: Theo Leveque's one-man entry in the 3000m steeplechase for his first collegiate 9:41.40 time, Revon Williams' 47.49 and Jaden Howell's personal best 48.09 in placing 5th and 9th respectively in the 400m, Jalen McGee punching two tickets, the first coming in the long jump with a personal best 7.31m in placing 4th to later earn 3rd place in the 110m hurdles in a time of 14.11.
Fabian Campbell helped the Cougars to a pair of runner-up placings, the first in bettering his 800m qualifying time with a personal best 1:50.49 then later anchored the 4x400m tandem of Small, Williams, and Jayden Singleton to a 3:18.39 time.
Other personal best achievements on the weekend were in the 200m with Noah Kincade's 22.00 to place 28th and Jeramiah Martin's 7th place 110m hurdle time of 14.59.
Barton's next event is April 22nd in Emporia for the Midwest Classic hosted by Emporia State University.