Feb. 29, 2020 - The Concordia-Chicago men's track and field team traveled to Kenosha, WI today for the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference's 14th annual Indoor Championships. For roughly half of the men's team, today was their first experience at one of these events, but several raised their level of performance today, helping CUC to bring home a fifth-place finish.

Senior Thomas McNamara won the conference championship for the 5,000-meters, his 15:19.28 winning by 14 seconds over the second-place finisher. McNamara had competed in the mile and the 3,000-meters at previous indoor championships, but today was his first attempt in the 5,000. He will now look to achieve another goal of qualifying for the national meet when he runs at Wartburg College next weekend.

Tyrique Thomas was CUC's other top seed in the conference going into this meet after a record-breaking time of 8.44 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles last week. However, the NACC opted to run the 55-meter hurdles in this meet instead of the 60. Thomas had not run the 55 since two years ago, but he made the adjustment and qualified in the prelims with a top time of 7.98. Thomas then ran a 7.89 in the finals, although he landed in second place .06 behind the winner. He is also expected to compete at Wartburg next week for a possible national mark.

The Cougar throwers produced their best efforts today. Jacob Mills threw a 45' 3" in the weight throw, finishing in fifth place and demolishing his previous best efforts by nearly four feet. Shane Allen also recorded his best throw by nine inches, and his 44' 10 1/4" was good for sixth place. Allen also finished sixth in the shot put with a 42' 11 3/4" effort.

In the 3,000-meter run, freshman Ernest Bogart earned points for the Cougars with a sixth-place finish. He made an improvement of five seconds from his previous outing and recorded a 9:16.21.

Also recording a personal best was Max Woywod in the 400-meter dash. His time of 52.08 seconds was his best by about a quarter of a second and earned him fifth place in the event. Brandon Ellis captured sixth place with a 52.18.

Rounding out the scoring events for CUC's men, the 4 x 400-meter relay team of Ellis, Thomas, Woywod and Adam Gray with a fourth-place effort of 3:31.77, just .13 short of their collective fastest time. The distance medley relay team of Drake Dowdy, Gray, Simon Hatcher and Bogart came in seventh with an 11:48.41 finish