TURLOCK, Calif. – The ACU Wildcats got their national championship run off to a good start Thursday as they posted 15 points and one individual national title on the first day of the NCAA Division II outdoor track and field championship meet at Al Brenda Track at Warrior Stadium.
Early in the day the Wildcats got five points from the long jump duo of
Ramon Sparks (sixth with a mark of 24-2.25) and Lavance Williams (seventh in 23-11.75), but it was the last event of the day that gave the Wildcats their biggest push.
Senior
Amos Sang – whose victory in the 5000 meters at the indoor championship gave the four-man Wildcat team the national title – captured his second straight national championship in the 10,000 meters, crossing the finish line in 29:10.00 on a crisp, cool night in northern California.
Sang (28:20.35) and Southern Indiana's Dustin Emerick (28:41.62) entered the race as the only two athletes to turn in sub-29:00 times on the season, and they quickly broke away from the pack, along with Adams State's Luke Cragg and American International's Glarius Rop.
About halfway through the race, Sang and Rop broke away and it became a two-man race over the final 5000 meters. And Sang – the defending national outdoor champion and the reigning indoor national champion in the 5000 meters – wasn't going to lose that race.
"The strategy going into the race was to go out early and make everyone keep up with me," Sang said. "I wanted to put the pressure on everyone else, control the race and not let anyone else dictate the race to me.
"At some point, I asked him (Rop) if he wanted to take the lead for a while, and he said he would," Sang said. "I rode on his shoulder for a while, but with about a mile left I decided it was time to make my move."
And Rop – who had answered every other challenge in the race – became a distant memory as Sang began pulling away, winning the race and becoming the first man in NCAA Division II history to finish in the top six in the 10,000 meters four times.
Earlier in the day,
Desmond Jackson coasted to a time of 10.22 seconds and the top seed in Saturday's 100-meter final, and he ran the second leg on the 4x100 relay team that had the best times in the prelims (40.16) and will be the No. 1 seed in Saturday's final. Thursday morning,
Tyler Fleet finished ninth in the hammer throw.
The ACU women struggled on Thursday as neither
Sydney Smith (100 meters) nor
Chloe Susset (3000 meter steeplechase) qualified for Saturday's finals in those two races.
