PITTSBURG -- A pair of school-records including one that had stood for 40 years along with three national champion performances would lead the Cloud County Community College men's track and field team to a third-place finish at the 2021 NJCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships at the Robert W. Plaster Center and Harvey Dean Track in Pittsburg on Saturday.
Finishing the two-day meet with a total of 91.5 points, Cloud County would trail only National Champion South Plains College who ran away with the team title with 138 points and Iowa Central Community College who finished as national runner-up with 93 points. The T-Birds would edge Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference foe Barton who finished with 87 points while New Mexico Junior College finished a distant fourth with 59 points among the 26 teams who scored at the national meet.
Earning one of the three national titles earned by CCCC on Saturday would be the 4x800 meter relay team consisting of Rylan Cheney, Ephraim Lerkin, Michael Iyali and Habtamu Geta as three of the four (Cheney, Iyali, and Geta) would earn their second national title in as many days with a school-record time of 7:42.13 to break a record that had stood since 1981. Capping off an undefeated indoor season with a national title would be sophomore Courtney Lawrence in the shot put with a throw of 18.83 meters (61 ft. - 9.5 in.) to win by 7.5 inches over his next closest competitor.
The final national champion crowned for a Cloud County athlete would come in the multi-events as Andrew Betton would make up ground in the final three events (60 meter hurdles, pole vault, 1,000 meters) to come away with a national title by finishing with 4,736 points. Joining Betton in the top-three of the heptathlon would be sophomore Marcquiece Cade with a third-place finish by scoring 1,953 points on the final day to finish 4,636 points.
It would almost be a clean-sweep of the relay races by the T-Birds as the 4x400 meter relay team of Emanuel Wanga, Shadrick Tansi, Jaysaun Smith, and Timothy Nyinguan would come up just short of a national title to finish as national runner-up by finishing the final event of the day with a time of 3:12.22 to earn the best non-national title finish by CCCC on Saturday. Cloud County would also get points from Nyinguan (fourth, 1:21.00) and Lerkin (fifth, 1:21.57) in the 600 meters as well as Awet Beraki in the mile run (4:19.99) to finish the day with 54 total points in nine events.
What's next?
With the indoor season in the books, Cloud County will now turn its attention to the outdoor season which is expected to start in a few weeks. A schedule has not yet been finalized for the T-Birds for the outdoor season, but is not expected to begin before March 20th. Once a schedule is finalized for the CCCC track and field teams, it will be posted at www.cloudtbirds.com.