University of Southern Indiana’s men’s track and field team had two individuals crowned Great Lakes Valley Conference Champions as well as three runners-up this past weekend.
Day One: Juniors Wyat Harmon and Austin Nolan escaped from everyone in the field as they claimed GLVC Champion and Runner-up in the 5000 meters, respectively. Harmon finishing first with a NCAA II provisional qualifying time of 14 minutes, 39.43 seconds and Nolan followed behind with his own NCAA II provisional qualifying time of 14:44.30. Junior Grady Wilkinson also added an extra point with his eighth-place finish to make it 19 total points alone for USI in the 5000m, with a time of 15:13.72.
Freshman Zach Barton qualified for the finals in the 60m prelims while taking the heat with a time of 6.78.
Screaming Eagles’ distance medley relay team composed of senior Javan Winders, freshman Oneel Occenat, sophomore Madison King and junior Nathan Hall grabbed fifth and four more points to USI’s total with a time of 10:26.72.
Day Two: Barton kicked things off with quite an exciting race for the 60m finals. Barton was out leaned by Daquan Davis of Southwest Baptist to settle for GLVC Runner-up matching his time from the prelims set at 6.78. The 60m finals had to go to a replay review which determined Barton was lunged out by Davis by about a hundredth of a second. Barton’s 60m times were brand new NCAA II provisional qualifiers.
King put in a valiant effort in the 800m recording a 10th place finish with his time of 1:59.76, only two tenths of a second difference out of 8th place and scoring position.
USI’s distance squad shone once again this time with a familiar pair of athletes grabbing the top two spots in the 3000m. This go around, Nolan was dubbed GLVC Champion with a time of 8:34.06 where Harmon paced close behind with his time of 8:34.81. Both 3000m times were at least three seconds ahead of the third-place finisher from Illinois Springfield.
In the field, junior Tyler Nickelson found himself on the podium with a leap of 6 feet, 2.75 inches, seventh-place finish and two points tacked onto the USI team score.
As a team, the Eagles finished fifth overall out of the 14 teams with 51 points, their best finish since 2016.
Up Next: USI’s qualifiers for the NCAA II Outdoor National Championships will make the trip down south to Birmingham, Alabama held March 13-14.
