Safiya John | University of Southern Mississippi Athletic
Safiya John | University of Southern Mississippi Athletic
Track & Field End Indoor Campaign in Birmingham with Program Record
The Southern Miss track & field team finished their 2023 indoor campaign with a school record broken and a few other podium trips Feb. 20-21 at the Sun Belt Indoor Track & Field Championships at the Birmingham CrossPlex.
The women's team finished ninth, and the men's finished sixth. In a new conference, the Golden Eagles will take away a lot from this meet and prepare for the outdoor season.
Safiya John took second place in the Pentathlon with 3,798 points for the first podium trip of the two-day event. Omar Austin took first in the 400m finals with a time of 46.98 for a personal best and was just shy of the program record by 38 milliseconds. Smilla Kolbe recorded a second-place in mark in the 800m finals with a time of 2:11.42. Zayne Palomino recorded a third-place showing in the high jump with a personal best of 2.09m.
Both the men's and women's four-by-four stood on the third-place podium. The men, Okheme Moore, DJ Butler, Landon Chalden, and Omar Austin, clocked in a time of 3:14.55 for a season-best.
The women's four-by-four of Trinity Benson, Trinity Flagler, Destiny Charles, and Savi'a Varnell finished with a time of 3:43.42 to replace the five-year-old school record of 3:44.83.
Indoor is over, but the track & field team will look ahead and prepare for the outdoor season that begins in t-minus 24 days in Mobile, Ala., at the South Alabama Invitational.
Original source can be found here.