Cloud County Athletics
PITTSBURG - Another year and another NJCAA Region VI Indoor Track and Field Team Championship for the Cloud County Community College men's track and field team as the T-Birds would earn their fourth consecutive Region VI Indoor Title at the Robert W. Plaster Center in Pittsburg on Sunday.
Coming nearly to the day of last year's NJCAA Region VI Title, Cloud County would finish with 119 points to finish as the only team to crack the 100-point barrier with Butler and Barton both finishing in a tie for second with 97 total points. Rounding out the top-five would be Fort Scott in fourth with 76 points along with Northwest Kansas Tech and Cowley tying for fifth with 74 points.
After scoring 38 points in opening day action among five scored events, the remaining 15 events in the meet would account for 81 points as the T-Birds would add to what was a 10-point lead heading into final day action to win by 22 points. 30 of the 81 points would come from Region VI Indoor Champions in the heptathlon, 600 meters, and 4x400 meter relay as the relay team of Emmanuel Wanga, Timothy Nyinguan, Alphonse Igish, and Shadrick Tansi would cap off the team title in style by finishing just .71 seconds shy of tying the school-record set just last year by three of the four members on the relay team (Wanga, Tansi, and Nyinguan).
The heptathlon victory would come from now three-time NJCAA Region VI Heptathlon Champion Andrew Betton who would turn his 2,633-point day-one outing into a 4,950-point season-best that would finish nearly 400 points of the next closest competitor. The final NJCAA Region VI Indoor Champion of the weekend for CCCC would come from Wanga in the 600 meters as the Lae, Papua New Guinea, native would post a time of 1:19.87 to tie his season-best time. Betton would also go on to earn a Region VI runner-up finish in the high jump after clearing a national qualifying mark of 2.00 meters (6 ft. - 6.75 in.) while Nyinguan would take third in the triple jump (14.48 meters, 47 ft. - 6.25 in.), fifth in the 600 meters (national qualifying time of 1:21.12), and sixth in the high jump (1.85 meters, 6 ft. - 0.75 in.).
Other top track performances would come from Raziel Patton who would finish third in the 800 meters (1:57.92) and Tansi in the 400 meters (49.87) while Hassan Abidi would take sixth in the 600 meters (1:21.46) and seventh in the 800 meters (2:00.95). The remaining points for CCCC would come from athletes competing in the heptathlon as Anson Moses would post a season-best total of 4,538 points as did Elias Rivera with 4,336 points. Including Betton's NJCAA-best total of 4,950 points this season, the T-Birds account for three of the top-nine Heptathlon scores this season.
What's next?
Cloud County will be off this upcoming week before competing for the final time in the 2022 indoor season at the 2022 NJCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships which will be held at the Plaster Center in Pittsburg. Following the conclusion of the Region VI Indoor Track and Field Championships, Cloud County has posted 23 times and marks that currently would qualify for the national championship meet. Four of the marks are in field events, with 16 coming on the track as two of the marks currently top the NJCAA with eight marks ranking in the top-10.