Men’s track places third to start indoor season
There are few two-sport stars at Rice, but seniors Bubba Heard and Jon Turner are certainly the cream of the multi-athlete crop for the Owls. Heard and Turner — both key contributors on the football team — placed first and third, respectively, in the 200 meters in last Friday’s Leonard Hilton Memorial at the University of Houston.
The rest of the men’s track team did not do quite as well overall, managing a third-place finish with 64 points. The University of Texas won the meet with a total of 108 points and Stephen F. Austin University snuck by with 65.20 points.
Next up for the Owls will be a return trip to the UH Athletics Center for the Houston Invitational on Feb. 2. While their opponents are not yet set, the team will once again undoubtedly be facing the Cougars, who finished fifth last Friday with 45.20.
Since the conditions will most likely be the same for the Houston Invitational, the Owls can expect to be successful in the same events that they were last week. Heard finished in 22.12 seconds and Turner finished shortly thereafter with a time of 22.51 as the Owls teamed to dominate the 200. Turner also finished second in the 60m with a time of 6.88 seconds.
The Owls also performed very well in the triple jump as they were led by senior Devon Fanfair, who jumped a full meter further than the team’s best jump from one year ago. Fanfair’s longest jump was 49 feet, 1.75 inches, enough to land him in first, although it was not by much — freshman Ugo Nduaguba took second place with his jump of 48 feet, 11.75 inches. Both athletes had their longest leap of the day on their sixth and last jumping opportunities.
“The triple jump right at the end of the meet was great,” junior Aaron Robson said. “We had two great performances and the competition between the two was excellent.”
However, Nduaguba was not the only successful freshman last weekend. Freshman Clay Baker broke Rice’s all-time record in the weight throw by hitting the mark of 45-01, breaking the previous record was of 42-11, which was set in 2004 by T.J. Fairbanks. However, the throw was only good enough for 14th place overall.
In the longer-distance running events, junior Justin Maxwell finished third in the 5,000 meters with a time of 15:18.08. Junior Charles Hampton came in ninth place in his first race back after a back injury forced him to miss the entire cross country season.
Robson and junior Simon Bucknell were unable to return to action this weekend, but both are expected back soon.
Even without Robson and Bucknell, the team managed to finish third in the distance medley with a time of 10:39.63, just five seconds out of first place.
While disappointed with a third-place finish, the team does have reason to be optimistic, said head coach Jon Warren (Jones ‘88).
“We’ll have some other guys running in the distance events [due to injuries],” Warren said. “I’d like to have better performances in the middle distance events as well, [but] right now we’re as well rounded as we’ve been in years.”
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