MTF Shatters Records in Outdoor Season Opener

Sunday, March 19, 2023 - 6:00 pm | Dylan Kessler

Phoenix, AZ - The Mesa Thunderbirds men's track & field team put up an impressive showing in their outdoor season opener at the Mesa Multi Invitational and the GCU Invitational.

Two school records were broken along with 12 athletes hitting a qualifying standard for outdoor nationals.

The 4x100m relay team (Ousman Jagne, Jacob Samford, Khamis Hassan, and Tyson Tippett) finished in first place ahead of NCAA DI schools GCU, Washington St., and NAU. They also shattered the previous school record of 40.32 seconds and broke the meet record with a 39.46-second performance.

Yotuel Garcia broke the outdoor school record for 5000m as he ran a time of 14:33.70 and finished in second place out of 28 athletes.

Theodore Gosselin won the decathlon at the Mesa Multi Invite, scoring 5,998 points.

The 4x400m relay team (Samford, Joshua Anderson, Miles Fears, and Donovan Castillo) finished in first place with a qualifying time of 3:15.57.

Tippett won the 100m dash with a personal-best time of 10.37 seconds. His time also qualified him for outdoor nationals and broke the meet record. Hassan ran a PB time of 10.62 seconds and was fourth overall out of 39 athletes.

Ernest Green (1:51.98 PB) and Samuel Green (1:53.43 PB) both hit qualifying marks for 800m. They also finished in third and seventh place out of 32 athletes.

In the 400m dash, Castillo was sixth overall with a qualifying time of 47.72 seconds. Anderson was eighth overall (48.63 PB) and just missed the qualifying standard of 48.31 seconds.

Tippett returned for his third race on the track, this time in the 200m dash. He also ran a PB in this event as he ran a qualifying time of 21.20 seconds to finish in fourth place out of 55 athletes.

Noah Miller was able to qualify in the shot put with a mark of 15.91m to finish in fourth place out of 20 athletes. Miller was also ninth out of 30 athletes in the discus throw with a mark of 44.80m. Just 1.78m short of the qualifying standard.

In the 400m hurdles, both Miles Fears (sixth place - 55.52) and Devin Jackson (seventh place - 55.60) barely missed the qualifying standard of 55.20 seconds. Javier Garcia also just missed out on qualifying in the 1500m, as he ran a time of 4:02.32. The qualifying standard is 4:02.10.

Samuel Van Alstine (9:58.25) and Greyson Akers (10:05.27) went 1-2 in the 3000m steeplechase but weren't able to qualify. The qualifying standard is 9:51.90.

Jeremiah Reed was second out of 23 athletes in the long jump with a mark of 7.16m. Efrain Velez was second out of five athletes in the triple jump with a mark of 12.47m.

The T-Birds will travel to Tucson next weekend to compete at Willie Williams Classic. The meet will be hosted by the University of Arizona.