Last weekend marked the second track and field meet of the semester. The Jayhawk Classic was held in Lawrence at Kansas University.

Athletes from both the men’s and women’s teams came back with strong positive results.

For the men’s team, five athletes picked up provisionals and many of the remaining athletes showed improvements.

Head Coach Bryan Schiding said, “KU was a much better meet than our opener meet. Our distance guys ran extremely well compared to what they did in that first meet and are starting to show a bit of what our potential will be in order to score points on that conference level and hopefully on a national level.”

Sophomore Eric Schott won the 3k with a time of 8:34.83, just missing a provisional.

As for the sprinters, junior Jeff Fraley did very well last weekend, getting two provisional marks, a strong mark for the 60m and second for the 200m with a time of 21.98.

“His 200m is a good time for this early in the season, but he will run faster hopefully in both events,” said Schiding

The team had two significant standout marks in the pole vault event with senior Michael Juergen’s jump of 15-07 and sophomore Brady Melugin’s personal best of 16-07.75, which ranks him third nationally.

“Nationals is not our main goal right now,” said Schiding. “We need to be technically sound and perform at a very high level because our first goal for the season is to do well at the conference championships. Our goal is always to win the conference championships.”

Other notable mentions from last week’s meet are junior Darion Boure, who picked up a triple jump provisional with a distance of 48-04.00 that places him eighth in Division II; freshman Bryan Burns came out of the weekend with a second place finish overall in last week’s competition.

For the women’s team, senior Whitney Hardy picked up a provisional in the high jump with a height of 5-07.75, which currently ranks her sixth in Division II for that event.

Senior Kylie Cornman picked up a provisional in the shot put with a distance of 49-02.25.

“Kylie had a very technically sound throw in the finals, which was one of the biggest throws that anyone has ever thrown here at Southern and that’s among some great company,” said Head Coach Patty Vavra.

Senior Kaitlyn Belisle won the 3k event with a time of 10:25.42, with teammates junior Dora Eastin and freshman Sierra Gray finishing just behind in third and fifth place.

“We had some improved performances since our first meet two weeks ago and we got a couple people healthy and competing that weren’t two weeks ago, so I think this time of year it is most important to see the improvement after being away from school and organized practice and see where we need to be for the upcoming season,” said Vavra

The Southern track and field teams host the MSSU Lion Invite today.

The men will start a heptathlon that consists of seven events over two days and the women a pentathlon that will be today only.

The multi-event meet will be held at the Leggett & Platt Athletic Center.