Kansas’ Morris second in league decathlon
Columbia, Mo. ? Kansas University’s Andy Morris placed second in the decathlon at Saturday’s Big 12 track and field championships at the University of Missouri’s Walton Stadium.
Morris, a senior from Carmel, Ind., led after the first day. He finished with an NCAA provisional qualifying 7,199 points. Missouri’s Knut Sommerfield won with 7,318 points.
Morris’ second-day marks included a 110-meter hurdle time of 15.01, a discus toss of 121-feet, 5-inches, pole vault of 14-51/4, javelin throw of 172-8 and a 1,500 meter time of 4:54.94.
In the women’s hammer, KU junior Jamie Waters placed sixth with a throw of 163-5. Kansas senior Jeremy Hull placed eighth in the pole vault with a leap of 16-63/4.
One of KU’s top performances of the day came from senior Jennie Wonder in the 400-meter hurdles.
In some of the lanes, the hurdles were inadvertently set too high and Wonder was in one of those lanes. Wonder ran 1:00.31, less than three-tenths of a second off her personal best, and qualified for the finals running on those high hurdles.
Because of the hurdle controversy, meet officials have decided to run an additional finals section today which will include Kansas’ other two 400 hurdles competitors Kerry Fink and Abbey Ferris although neither originally qualified for the finals.
A regular final of eight competitors will follow an extra four-athlete section of athletes affected by the higher hurdles. Fink and Ferris will run in the section of four, while Wonder will run in the section of eight.
“Our athletes did a great job overcoming the hurdles they ran on,” KU head coach Stanley Redwine said. “Hopefully we can use this opportunity to our advantage.”
Day Two was highlighted by some solid performances in preliminary competition.
Kansas’ NCAA automatic 1,500 qualifying duo of seniors Charlie Gruber and Katy Eisenmenger each posted good enough times to advance to the finals.
Gruber placed third in the 1,500 in 3:51.51, while Eisenmenger was second overall in 4:27.52.
Other athletes qualifying for finals on Sunday include Leo Bookman in the 100 and 200 meter dash, Anson Jackson in the 110 hurdles and Wonder in the 100 hurdles.
“There were some events where we did better than we thought we would and some areas where we struggled,” Redwine said. “Andy Morris did a great job and better than we expected him to do. Scott Russell got us off to a great start yesterday with his win in the hammer. Everything is looking OK. We’re going to go out and do our best and focus on that, and go from there.”
Overall, KU’s men placed sixth after two days with 19 points. Missouri led with 49 followed by Nebraska 43, Iowa State 25, Texas A&M 22, Oklahoma 20, KU 19, Texas 17, Kansas State 10, Baylor 9, Colorado 8, Texas Tech 7 and Oklahoma State 5.
KU’s women placed ninth with seven points. Nebraska led at 61.5, followed by Kansas State 46, Iowa State 33, Baylor 28, Missouri 20, Colorado 10.5, Texas A&M 8, Oklahoma 8, KU 7, Texas Tech 6, Oklahoma State 6 and Texas 0.
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