ROCHESTER, Mich. – After two days of the Horizon League Outdoor Championships, the Milwaukee men's track and field team is second out of eight teams competing at the Elaine Leigh Track & Field Complex.
Matthew Bye's title in the decathlon highlighted the second day for the Panthers.
Milwaukee stands at 53 points after the first seven events to rank second. Youngstown State leads the meet with 125 points while host school Oakland is third with 36 points.
"A lot more good happened today than bad," head coach
Andrew Basler said. "I think we are setting ourselves up to bring home some trophies. We're still a bit back from Youngstown on both genders but we'll see where the chips fall. We did a great job with the events that we did today, and we've got to finish the job tomorrow."
Behind a strong second day in the decathlon, Bye won the event after placing in the top three in the remaining five events. Bye won both the 110m hurdles (15.51 seconds) and pole vault (4.30m), finished second in the 1500m (5:22.10), and placed third in the discus (35.16m) and javelin (45.42m) to finish with 6190 points.
Tony Bretall finished runner-up to Bye in the decathlon with 6133 points after winning the javelin (52.04) and tallying three runner-up finishes. The junior placed second in the 110m hurdles (15.77), discus (38.11m), and pole vault (4.20m).
Jack Misky won the decathlon discus at 41.58m, which led to a fourth-place overall finish in the decathlon at 5133 points.
Caleb Rogalski led three Milwaukee scorers in the shot put, throwing a personal best 16.89m to finish runner-up.
Gracien Jules came in fourth with a throw of 15.26m while
Finnegan Shields was sixth at 15.00m.
In the 3000m steeplechase,
Aidan Sodemann earned a second-place finish with a personal-best time of 9:15.04.
Corey Thornton crossed the line at 9:26.27 to place fourth in the event.
Jack Browne was the top Panther scorer in the pole vault finishing fourth at 4.25m.
Dylan Sieloff (4.25m) and
Tony Bretall (4.10m) finished seventh and eighth, respectively, in the event.
Obi Iwuagwu scored in the long jump, posting a leap of 7.07m for sixth.
Dane Nelson (14.63), Bye (15.76), and Bretall (16.05) all advanced to Sunday's 110m hurdles finals following top eight times in the preliminaries.
Michael Gorman and
Golden Cotton advanced to a pair of tomorrow's finals in the 100m and 200m. Gorman placed third in the 100m prelims at 10.65 seconds and was seventh in the 200m with a time of 21.44 seconds. Cotton recorded a time of 21.24 for second in the 200m and placed sixth in the 100m at 10.74 seconds.
In the 400m hurdles prelims,
Ben Marano placed second at 55.49 seconds while Nelson was fourth at 56.56 seconds.
Hunter Krepline (1:54.84) and
Luke Rapisarda (50.20) each advanced to the finals in the 800m and 400m, respectively.
The final day of the Horizon League Championships begins tomorrow at 9 a.m. CT with the final field events. Running finals will get underway two hours later at 11 a.m.
"I'm excited for tomorrow," Basler said. "I think we continue to take big steps forward as a program and the culture and momentum of this team continues to improve and shift."
