Cross Country/Track & Field | 2/21/2023 11:04:00 AM
Pittsburg, KS - The Neosho County Community College Men's and Women's teams competed over the weekend, Saturday, February 18th and Sunday, February 19th at the Region VI Championships held at the Harvey Dean Track / Robert W. Plaster Center on the campus of Pittsburg State University. Both the men's and women's teams placed 10th in the 16 team region, this was the highest finish in nearly a decade going back all the way to the 2015 season for the women and the 2013 season for the men to have a team place higher than that.
Coach Bruton when asked about the finish in the Region, "Honestly I am really excited with what we accomplished and where we are headed this season and beyond. When I took over the program we struggled to get any points in our region, last year we managed to earn some points but didn't beat any other scoring teams in the region, and this year to jump up and beat more than a handful of teams in the toughest conference in all of NJCAA Track & Field was really encouraging. We have been building and getting better each year with each team here at Neosho setting little stones to build upon. The hope is to continue to build on those success and keep moving up the list and be a real contender at the top in the near future. We are outmatched in almost every faucet of the sport by teams in our conference if you are looking at things like budgets, facilities, and raw talent, yet the kids we are getting here work incredibly hard and are closing the time and distance gaps on the others in our conference just out of sheer determination and hard work. I am really proud of this group, they have a lot more yet to accomplish this year but they have already built on that foundation for the future."
The Region Championships saw a lot of great things, the team had 40 personal best at the meet and broke 5 school records. Team records that were broken included the Women's DMR (Pena, Lewis, Korir, Salil), and the Women's 4x800m (Pena, Korir, Salil, Sears).
Naomi Salil once again shined bright on the weekend, she was a member of both relay school records and broke her own school records in both the mile and 3000m races, she broke school records in all 4 of her events on the weekend, an incredible feat. On the the Men's side
Jared Sylvester continued his great season. He made finals in the 60m tying his personal best and followed that up on Day 1 by tying his personal best 200m and missing finals by just 1 spot. On Day 2 Sylvester finished 7th in the finals of the 60m, turned around and broke the school record in the 400m finishing 5th, and lead the 4x400m men's team to a seasons best and top 10 all time mark in relay event for the Panthers.
Next up the Panthers travel a host of individuals to the NJCAA Championships March 3rd and 4th, in Topeka, KS at Washburn University.
