YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – The Milwaukee men's track & field team closed out action at the Horizon League Championships Sunday. The Panthers finished as runners-up for the sixth consecutive season and won six individual titles on the weekend.
 
Highlighting the final day of action was the Men's ARI Accelerator Outstanding Running Performer of the Meet Jaelyn Reeves-Lile. He started his day in the 100m dash, securing his first title of the day breaking the program and league championship meet record with a time of 10.24. Reeves-Lile came back for the 200m dash flying to another meet and school record with a championship time of 20.51.
 
"Jaelyn had a great championship meet," said head coach Andrew Basler. "Sweeping the 100m and 200m with records in both and punching his ticket to the West Prelims."
 
Anthony Buford was named Horizon League Field Freshman of the Year for his long jump victory yesterday. Today, he placed fourth in the 400m dash with a new career-best performance of 49.19.
 
Dominating the triple jump was Divine Aniamaka, his leap of 15.39m blowing past the rest of the field by over 1.6m and tying the program record in the event. Bryant McLaughlin joined Aniamaka in medaling with a third-place distance of 13.71m, and Bishop Bufford (13.50m) took fourth.
 
Caden Thomas added a runner-up finish for Milwaukee in the high jump, clearing 2.02m to lead the team.
 
Earning one more medal for the Panthers was Jeremiah Johnson in the hammer throw, setting a new career-best with a huge toss of 51.40m to finish third.
 
Lucas Picco represented the Black & Gold with a strong showing in the finals of the 800m run, coming in fourth place at 1:51.93.
 
Liam Richards had the best pole vault performance of his outdoor career, taking fourth place after clearing 4.41m.
 
Richards also ran in the finals of the 110m hurdles, claiming the fifth spot after crossing the finish line in 14.81. Ethan Mitchell was next in with a sixth-place time of 15.24.
 
Will Whiteis was the team's top finisher in the 5000m run, making his way to the finish in 14:59.53 to take tenth.
 
"I need to shoutout all our 5000m runners for persevering through heat we have not run in this year and battling hard." Basler added.
 
Overall, the Panthers racked up 141 points across the three-day competition.
 
"The goal is to compete for Horizon League Championships each season and in that sense, we fell short. But that should not take away from the great effort our teams put forth this weekend to claim runner-up trophies." Basler concluded saying. "The overall energy and support was great and we had a lot of conference champions, all-conference, and end of the year awards. We will continue to find ways to improve as a program to put us in a position to get to the top of the podium."
 
UP NEXT
 
Athletes who have met the NCAA qualifying standards will advance to the NCAA West Regional Preliminary Rounds, held May 28-31 at Texas A&M's E.B Cushing Stadium in College Station, Texas.