WINFIELD, Kansas — As the calendar creeps ever closer to May and the NJCAA National Outdoor Track and Field Championships, pressure intensifies for student-athletes still looking to etch their names on the heat sheets as national qualifiers.
On Saturday, at the Southwestern College Relays, the T-Birds had four new athletes post national qualifying marks as Jace McKinney, Levi Armon, Darrien Lipscomb and Alexis Budke all earned the right to head to El Dorado on May.
Lipscomb, already a national qualifier as a member of Cloud County's 4X400-meter relay team that placed first Saturday, won the individual 400-meter with a time of 48.01 seconds. He also added a fourth-place finish in the 200-meter dash en route to earning MVP honors for the meet.
McKinney, Armon and Budke all earned their national qualifying marks — giving Cloud County a total of 33 NJCAA qualifiers to date — out in the field as McKinney placed fifth in the Javelin (172'02), Budke was eighth in the women's hammer throw (142'09), and Armon took fourth in the men's shot put (50'11).
Cloud County received a strong performance from a handful of throwers Saturday as, in addition to the three new qualifiers, sophomore Vashon McCarthy won the men's discus (157'07), freshman Takyra Hilton won the women's shot put (45'05.25), and sophomore Gabbreil Harris set the school record in the women's discus.
Harris posted a mark of 168'09, topping the previous mark of 166'10 set last season by NJCAA national champion, and current University of Minnesota star, Nayoka Clunis.
The T-Birds will have a strong chance to repeat in that event as Harris is currently ranked No. 1 among NJCAA female throwers in the event.
Cloud County also had six additional event winners on Saturday.
Sophomore distance runner Moses Dirane, already a national qualifier in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and 1,500-meter run, won the men's 800-meter run with a national qualifying time of 1:54.56.
Fellow sophomore Ariel St. John made it a clean sweep for the T-Birds in the 800-meter as she won the women's race in a time of 2:13.53.
Both the men's and women's 4X100-meter relay teams picked up event wins, with the men crossing the finish line in 41.44 and the women's team coming in at 46.68.
In the individual 100-meter dash, freshmen Methelus Myflore and Ageonia Wilkerson finished back-to-back on the podium in first and second place, respectively.
Methelus won the event in 12.24 seconds, followed closely by Wilkerson in 12.44.
Rounding out Cloud County's event winners was freshman jumper Johnathan Spearman, who took home first place in the long jump with a leap of 22'4.5''.
The T-Birds will now prepare for the Region VI/KJCCC Championships set for this upcoming Thursday through Saturday down in Hutchinson.
