Clayton State track & field opens season setting a school record and posting a NCAA provisional mark
MORROW, GA – During last year’s indoor season, the Clayton State women’s indoor track & field team set four team records. On Saturday, the squad came away with two team records and a NCAA provisional mark from the Birmingham-Southern College Panther Icebreaker Meet at the Birmingham Crossplex.
Senior Paige Galvin set one of the four records last season and did it again Saturday. Fresh off the NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships two weeks earlier, Galvin bettered her 3,000m indoor mark by 12 seconds to finish fourth in 10:37.81.
Meanwhile, newcomer Jessica Matthews took it one-step better. The freshman from Monroe, Ga. broke the team’s indoor triple jump record and hit an NCAA DII provision mark on her first collegiate attempt in the event. Matthews finished up with a best of 38-4¼ to place sixth in the meet and have the best Clayton State women’s triple jump for both indoors and outdoors.
The Lakers ended the meet with three, Top 10 individual finishes as Taylor Galvin placed 10th in the mile run with a time of 5:37.14, followed by Monique Belmudes in 11th (5:38.40) and Jessica Smith in the 14th spot (5:41.54).
Clayton State’s 4x400m relay team of Belmudes, Samantha Walling, Ashley Hightower and Shanice Walker finished 18th overall with a time of 4:21.51.
MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD
Led by the Clayton State distance corps, the Lakers track & field team opened up its ninth indoor season Saturday with seven Top 10 finishes at the Icebreaker Meet.
Senior Ayrton Azcue, the team’s MVP in 2012, led the way with the team’s highest individual finish with a second place finish in the 3,000m run with a time of 8:58.32. He finished the long day running the fastest leg on the team’s 4 x 400m relay that ran a respectable 3:23.43 to place fourth in the event.
Both Charles Anderson and Ciaran Lane earned third place showings in the 800m and 3K. Anderson finished with a time of 1:57.43, while Lane came in behind Azcue with a time of 9:06.88.
Along with Anderson and Azcue, Shelby Russell and Dinero Nicholas also ran on the 4 x 400 team. They were four seconds faster than this time last season and that team eventually got down to 3:19.89 last February.
Other Top 10 finishes came from Job Kemboi and Matt Bailey in the mile and Tanner Thomason in the 3K. Kemboi placed fifth in the mile with a time of 4:43.19, followed by Bailey in seventh at 4:46.88. Thomason finished ninth in the 3,000m with a time of 10:09.16.
The teams will take off for the holidays and return to action on January 20th in a meet in the Winston-Salem State Open in Winston-Salem, NC.
