Feb. 22, 2008

HOUSTON - The Lamar University men's and women's track teams wrapped up day one of the 2008 Southland Conference Indoor Championship at the Yeoman Field House at the University of Houston with three titles in the final four events.

In the first running final of the meet, Renee Graham defended her title in the women's 5,000 meter run with a 17:09.42 performance. She coasted to victory over the entire field of runners, as the second place finisher crossed the line 41.05 seconds after the Cardinals senior. The title is the third individual SLC championship of Graham's indoor career.

The Lamar women followed Graham's performance with a win the in the distance medley relay, the fourth straight DMR title for the Lady Cardinals. The team of Karesse Lethermon, Toni Sylvester, Merci Bungei and Clerc Koenck clocked a 12:13.96, three and a half seconds ahead of the second place team from Sam Houston State.

Following where the women left off, the LU men's distance medley relay team also claimed the top spot, the second straight conference title for Lamar in the DMR. The team of Frank Bwambale, Julius Kasule, Ewan Simpson and Francis Kasagule crossed the finish line in 10:09.06, four seconds ahead of second place finisher Texas A&M Corpus Christi.

In the men's 5,000 meter run Samuel Kosgei notched a third place finish with a time of 14:53.40 to give the LU men their first six points of the meet.

In preliminary action the Cardinals had 12 runners qualify for Saturday's finals, with the men and women each advancing six runners.

Michael Gauthier, who has two top five finishes in his career at the SLC indoor meet, advanced to the finals with a 6.88 second, seventh place effort in the semi-finals. In the prelims Gauthier advanced with a 6.93 second sprint.

Jessika Johnson, who placed fourth in the 60-meter hurdles at the 2007 championship, advanced to the finals with a semi final performance of 8.79 seconds. In the prelims Johnson clocked the fastest time of any runner at 8.70 seconds which is .05 seconds faster than her own Lamar University record of 8.75 seconds.

Sylvester and Brittany Pollard both made their way to the finals in the women's 400 meter run, as Sylvester turned in a 56.77 second performance and Pollard crossed the finish line in 57.50 seconds. Heading into the finals, Sylvester and Pollard rank second and sixth respectively.

Pollard also advanced to the finals in the 200 meter dash, running a 25.38 second preliminary sprint. Her performance ranks as the fourth fastest 200 in school history, and was the sixth fastest 200 run during the prelims.

Jerel Massenburge advanced to the finals of the 400 meter dash with a personal-best performance of 49.53 seconds. He has the seventh fastest qualifying time heading into the finals, as runners two through eight finished within 0.57 seconds of each other.

Stephen Boone made his way to the men's 200 meter dash final with a personal-best 22.44 second performance in the prelims. He finished second in heat two is the eighth qualifier in the field. He is also the only runner to qualify for the finals that did not win his heat.

Ewan Simpson cruised to the 800 meter run finals by running the second fastest qualifying time, a 1:56.16. The performance won heat one of the 800, but was nearly two seconds off of his season-best time of 1:54.35.

In the women's mile run Koenck and Lethermon both advanced to the finals. Lethermon turned in the fourth fastest qualifying and finished second in heat one with a 5:14.33 performance, while Koenck won heat two in 5:16.25.

The Cardinals men also had two runners advance to the finals of the mile run, as Kasagule and Bwambale ran 4:25.50 and 4:26.35 in the preliminary races respectively. Bwambale won his heat and Kasagule finished second in his heat.

The championship meet gets back underway Saturday at 1:30 p.m. with the final of the women's mile. The final event of the day, the men's 4x400 meter relay is scheduled to begin at 4:35 p.m.