Cloud County Athletics
PITTSBURG - Putting together a strong final day to score 40 team points and jump seven spots up the final team standings, the Cloud County Community College men's track and field team would earn a top-five team finish by placing fourth at the 2022 NJCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships inside the Robert W. Plaster Center in Pittsburg on Saturday.
The 40-points that Cloud County would score on Saturday would be added to their eight points scored on Friday to finish with 48 total points and finish just three points out of a top-three finish as Iowa Western would take third with 51 total points. In second place would be Barton Community College with 62 points while the 2022 NJCAA Indoor Track and Field National Championship would be a runaway victory for South Plains College who finished with 140 total points.
Three school records and an individual National Champion would come on the day as freshman Mohamed Ahmed would take home a National Title in the weight throw with a mark of 19.50 meters (63 ft. - 11 in.) to win the event by over three and a half feet. The school-record performances would come from Andrew Betton in the heptathlon (5,065 points), the 4x400 meter relay team of Emmanuel Wanga, Timothy Nyinguan, Alphonse Igish, and Shadrick Tansi with a time of 3:11.64, and Wanga who would go on to set the 600-meter school record (1:19.73).
Betton's school-record mark of 5,065 points in the heptathlon would lead to a national runner-up finish for the sophomore who would earn a third-place finish in the pole vault portion of the multi-event with a mark of 3.95 meters (12 ft. - 11.5 in.). Wanga's time in the 600 meters would lead to a third-place finish individually while the 4x400 meter relay team earned a fifth-place finish in the final event of the meet.
Cloud County would also get a third-place finish from Quwayne Reid, Raziel Patton, Michael Iyali, and Rylan Cheney in the 4x800 meter relay with a time of 7:48.81 while Nyinguan would go on to earn a fifth-place finish in the 600 meters behind Wanga with a time of 1:19.12. Other action for CCCC on Saturday would see both Anson Moses and Elias Rivera both compete alongside Betton in the heptathlon, with Moses taking seventh with 4,569 points and Rivera taking ninth (4,519 points).
What's next?
Cloud County will look to build momentum from the strong finish on Saturday as the attention of the T-Birds will now turn to the 2022 outdoor track and field season in two weeks. CCCC is scheduled to open the outdoor portion of their season with a pair of meets on the weekend of March 18 and 19 with the Emporia State University Spring Invitational on March 18 followed by the Kansas Wesleyan University Relays on March 19.