Titans Finish Fourth At NCAA Championship
UW-Oshkosh used six All-America performances to finish fourth at the NCAA Division III Men's Outdoor Track & Field Championship held Thursday through Saturday (May 23-25) at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
UW-Oshkosh, which captured the 2009 NCAA outdoor title, scored 32 points en route to its highest finish at the championship since 2014. The Titans were also the national runner-up in 1990, a third-place finisher in 2003 and 2013 and a fourth-place finisher in 2012 and 2014.
UW-Eau Claire tallied 68 points to wins its first NCAA outdoor title. The Blugolds were followed by second-place Massachusetts Institute of Technology with 38 points, third-place University of Mount Union (Ohio) with 36, UW-Oshkosh and fifth-place John Carroll University (Ohio) with 29. University of Mount Union was the defending champion.
UW-Oshkosh, which has scored at least five points at each of the last 26 championships, received All-America efforts at this year's meet from Jonathan Wilburn in the triple jump, Ryan Powers in the 400-meter run, Jack Flynn in the discus, Joe Vils in the pole vault, Jackson Sheckler in the shot put and its 400-meter relay team of Benjamin Jung, Christian Lopez, Aaron McCarroll-Richardson and Robert Ogbuli. Wilburn, Sheckler and McCarroll-Richardson are all freshmen.
Wilburn finished second in the triple jump with a career-best measurement of 50-4 3/4. He moved into second place among the event's 20 competitors on the fifth of his six jumps. Yorai Shaoul of Massachusetts Institute of Technology won the triple jump with a distance of 50-7 1/2.
Earlier this year Wilburn placed fifth in the triple jump (48-4) at the Division III Indoor Championship.
Powers completed his fourth 400-meter race at the Division III Outdoor Championship with a third-place finish. His school-record run of 46.78 seconds broke the previous UW-Oshkosh record of 47.22 seconds that he set earlier this month. Patrick Mikel of Loras College (Iowa) won the 400-meter run with a time of 46.27 seconds.
Powers, who earlier this season finished third with a school-record time of 47.80 seconds in the 400-meter run at the Division III Indoor Championship, placed 14th (48.18) in the event at the 2016 Division III Outdoor Championship, eighth (47.73) in 2017 and 13th (48.12) in 2018.
Flynn, who earned all-region honors in helping UW-Oshkosh to a Division III men's basketball title this past winter, finished fourth in the discus with a throw of 165-5. He placed fifth with a measurement of 169-7 during his first appearance at the national meet in 2018. Cameron Yon of Penn State University-Harrisburg won the discus at this year's championship with a distance of 169-6.
Like Flynn, Vils also earned All-America accolades for the second straight year. Vils finished fourth at this year's meet with a height of 15-11 after placing eighth at the 2018 championship with a mark of 15-9. UW-Whitewater's Zach Jasinski won this year's title with a height of 17-2 3/4.
Sheckler gained an All-America mention in his national outdoor championship debut by throwing the shot put a sixth-place distance of 54-6 1/2. David Kornack of UW-Eau Claire captured first place in the event with a toss of 63-4 3/4.
In the 400-meter relay, UW-Oshkosh's team of Jung, Lopez, McCarroll-Richardson and Ogbuli ran to a fourth-place time of 41.21 seconds. It was second All-America award for Lopez in the 1,600-meter relay and the first for the remaining three Titans. Lopez earned his previous All-America citation with a sixth-place showing (41.21) at the 2016 Division III Outdoor Championship. Saint John's University (Minn.) won this year's 400-meter relay with a time of 40.92 seconds.
Powers also ran with Todd Beadle, Nick Freitag and Amitai Wheat for a ninth-place finish in the 1,600-meter relay. The group was disqualified in the final after advancing from the preliminaries with a seventh-place time of 3:14.01.
UW-Oshkosh also had Justin Rivers finish 10th in the high jump with a height of 6-6, Nick Tegtmeier 14th in the shot put with a measurement of 51-5, Bailey Quinn 16th in the hammer throw with a distance of 175-8, and both Steven Potter 13th and Freitag 15th in the 800-meter run with times of 1:52.58 and 1:53.10, respectively. Rivers and Potter are freshmen.
In all, UW-Oshkosh had representation in nine of this year's 19 individual events and both relays.
The top-eight finishers in each event gain All-America recognition.
2019 NCAA Division III Men's & Women's Outdoor Championship Daily Recaps: Day One • Day Two • Day Three
2019 NCAA Division III Men's Outdoor Track & Field Championship Website