CHICAGO – Junior Daniel Fleming (South Holland, Ill.) paced Chicago State men’s track & field with five top-10 finishes en route to scoring 22 points as the Cougars earned an eighth-place finish at the second-annual Great West Conference Outdoor Championships on May 13-15 in Yankton, S.D. As a team, CSU produced 15 top-10 showings in the three-day meet.
Fleming opened the meet by placing second in the decathlon after scoring a school record 5,946 points for the event after leading the multi-event competition after the meet’s first day. He finished first in the high jump (6-3.50), long jump (22-6.50), 100-meter dash (11.34) and 400-meter dash (50.56) during the first six events.
To go along with his decathlon finish, Fleming also finished fourth in the triple jump (42-9), fifth in the long jump (22-1), sixth in the 100m (11.15) and seventh in the high jump (6-2.75) to cap his individual efforts in the meet.
In addition to Fleming, the Cougars also received two top-10 finishes from sophomores Jershawn Dubose (Chicago, Ill.) and Uri Kuyoro (Harvey, Ill.), and freshman Matthew Jordan (Mogadore, Ohio).
Dubose placed sixth in the 110-meter hurdles with a personal-best time of 15.59 in the finals and captured 10th in the javelin throw with a mark of 118-9. Kuyoro shattered the school record in the 400-meter dash as he posted a time of 47.70 en route to placing second and finished seventh in the 200-meter dash at 22.35 after posting a PR time of 22.14 in the prelims. Jordan captured eighth place in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 10:11.70 and posted a personal-best time of 33:33.70 in the 10,000-meter run to finish 10th.
Junior Josh Campbell (Cartersville, Ga.) and sophomore Joe Hill (Chicago, Ill.) recorded PR times of 50.21 and 56.63, respectively, in the 400m. Campbell also placed eighth in the long jump after recording a mark of 21-2.50 and junior Jerrel Thornton (Chicago, Ill.) captured eighth place in the 100m at a time of 11.17. Senior Arturs Bareikis (Oak Forest, Ill.) posted a personal-best time of 34:29.94 in the 10,000-meter run and junior Michael Chew (Klang, Selangor, Malaysia) posted a PR time of 18:53.67 in the 5,000-meter run.
Fleming, Campbell, Thornton and Kuyoro later teamed up to set a school record in the 4x100-meter relay after crossing the finish line at a time of 41.99 to place fourth. In the 4x400-meter relay, Fleming, Thornton and Campbell would join junior Earnest Jones (Chicago, Ill.) in placing fifth with a season-best time of 3:21.90.
“I am extremely proud of the way our guys performed. I could not ask more from them. They left it all on the track. They are fine group of young men that I am proud to say, ‘I am their Coach’,” second-year head coach Wayne Holloway stated after the meet.
~CSU~