PHILADELPHIA -- ACU triple-jumper
Ramon Sparks continued his strong spring effort Saturday afternoon by finishing third in the championship flight of the event at the Penn Relays Carnival.
Sparks -- already an automatic qualifier for next month's NCAA Division II outdoor championship meet -- posted a legal-wind mark of 52 feet, 3.75 inches to finish third behind Florida's Omar Craddock (53-3.5) and Texas A&M's Zuheir Sharif (52-5.5).
Also in championship flight action on Saturday at historic Franklin Field,
Desmond Jackson finished fifth in the 100 meters in 10.60 seconds. Both Sparks and Jackson were the only NCAA Divisoin II athletes in their respective events on Saturday.
The final day of the event, however, belonged to the world's fastest man as Olympic champion Usain Bolt electrified the record crowd with his 8.97-second anchor leg on Jamaica's 4x100 relay.
Bolt holds the world record in the 100- and 200-meter runs, and his appearance at the Penn Relays — his first competition of 2010 — was responsible for the highest single-day attendance (54,310) in the event's 116-year history. A total of 117,346 fans watched the three days, also a record.
In other ACU track and field action on Saturday,
Cassie Brooks (100 hurdles) and
Jessica Sloss (discus) each provisionally qualified for the outdor meet with their mark at the Sooner Invitational in Norman, Okla.
Brooks was 10th in the hurdles race with a time of 14.47 seconds, while Sloss was 10th in the discus with a mark of 144 fet, 5 inches.
On the men's side,
Tyler Fleet finished seventh in the discus with a mark of 172 feet, 10 inches, which is a better provisional mark.
The Wildcats will be back in action next Saturday at the Oliver Jackson Invitational, their final meet before the Lone Star Conference championship meet, which will be May 7-9 in San Angelo.
