The Barton Community College men's track and field team continues to climb up the national ranks wrapping up the indoor season this weekend placing fifth at the NJCAA Indoor Track and Field National Championships held the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Improving in the final standings four straight indoor seasons, the Cougars bettered last year's seventh place with its highest finish since its national runner-up in the 2012 indoor season. With no individual national champions, the Cougars utilized its depth and solid performances garnering sixteen All-American awards leading all Region VI entries scoring fifty-six points falling just two points shy of fourth place.
The Cougars grabbed twenty of their points in the jumps as Barton took home four All-American awards and just missed on a fifth. Denroc Dixon achieved Barton's highest honor with Friday's long jump national runner-up leap of 7.39m (24-03.00) while teammate Leon Boyd secured the sixth spot at 7.19m (23-07.25). On Saturday Boyd had the better jumping day earning a third place triple jump finish at 15.26m (50-00.75). Adama Mbye grabbed the sixth spot with a 14.95m (49-00.75) leap while Dixon leaped just shy of the awards with a ninth place 14.37m (47-01.75) jump.
Eight points for the Cougars came in the 60m hurdles as Jermaine Jones' 8.10 placed third while Louis Rivers' 8.27 was good for seventh. Also on the short track, McKinely West was the lone sprinter to make the finals following his 6.75 prelim time to a fifth place national finish in 6.81.
West also helped Barton gather two final spots in the 200m taking fourth place in 21.69 while Anthony Adderly was seventh in 22.31. Two more seventh place finishes came in the sprints with Jaquez Wilson's 49.78 400m time and the 1:22.06 clocking of Kadeem Williams in the 600m. Devyn Brotherton was the lone All-American in the distance races finishing fifth in the 3000m crossing the line in 8:38.43.
The relays earned the Cougars seven points led by the 4X400m relay team of Paul Kinney, Williams, Alex Richemond, and Adderly missed third place by .01 of a second with a fourth place time of 3:16.40. In the distance medley the Cougars finished in 10:25.99 as Tyler Thornton, Kinney, Anthony Forrest, and Elder Colindres carried the baton for an All-American seventh place finish.
Two more All-American performances came in the throws with Romario Antoine in the shot put and Donald Daley in the weight throw. Antoine's eight place throw came in at 16.19m (53-01.50) with teammates Stevon Crooks placing tenth at 15.81m (51-10.50) and Ricky Nelson fifteenth at 15.43m (50-07.50). In the weight throw Daley's earned the honors with a 17.63m (57-10.25) throw while Nelson recorded his second top-15 finish with a throw of 16.38m (53-09.00) to place thirteenth.
Barton will now turn the attention to the outdoor season preparing the next couple of weeks for its first competition of the season.