At the NCAA Outdoor Championships last year, the Louisiana State University Tigers outran the Cougar 4x100m relay team by two one hundredths of a second: 38.42s to 38.44s.
The Tigers and the Cougars went head to head again at the Mt. SAC Relays on Saturday, and though the Cougars came in second in both relay events, the teams set records with some of the fastest times in the nation this season.
For 18 years the school record for the 4x400m relay stood at 3:06.09s. At Mt. SAC, the team of sophomores Amere Lattin, Raymund Clarke and Mario Burke and freshman Daniel Ford broke that record with a time of 3:04.38s. Though their time was the runner-up time, it is the No. 10 time in the country— giving the Cougars another NCAA top 24 ranking.
In the 4x100m relays, both the Cougars and the Tigers had world-class performances mirroring the races from the National Championships last June. Burke, senior Cameron Burrell and juniors Jacarias Martin and Eli Hall-Thompson ran 38.59s in the event — second only to LSU’s 38.57s.
Together the two teams stand alone as the nation’s two fastest times, almost two tenths of a second faster than the third-best time.
The Cougars’s time is third fastest in school history: Six one hundredths of a second behind the 1982 school record of 38.52s.
In addition to freshman Samiyah Samuels’s victory in the long jump, senior distance runner Selena Sierra and junior jumper Tonye’cia Burks had tremendous performances. The two set new personal records in their respective meets.
Sierra finished fifth in the women’s 3000m steeplechase with a time of 10:26.41s. Her time is currently No. 44 in the country, but it is also the new school record. Sierra’s time was almost four seconds faster than her previous school record, 10:31.06s.
Meanwhile, Burks started her outdoor season by setting the school triple jump record at 13.23m. Once again, she claimed victory in the triple jump invitational with a mark of 13.53m. Burks’s new school record puts her back into the national top 10 at No. 6.
