JMU Qualifies for Three More ECAC Events at Patriot Games

Saturday, January 31

Fairfax, Va.

All Day

James Madison University

Patriot Games

JMU Qualifies for Three More ECAC Events at Patriot Games

1/31/2015 11:59:00 PM | Track & Field

FAIRFAX, Va. – The James Madison track & field team successfully completed the Patriot Games on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 30 and 31, at the George Mason Field House with competitors qualifying for March's ECAC Championship meet in three events while the team finished third overall with 100 points in the 12-team field.

Sophomore Kennedy King (Hampton, Va./Phoebus) took the title in the long jump competition with a jump of 5.77 meters to qualify for the ECAC Championships. The mark is the seventh-best all-time in the event. Madison took both first and second place in the event, as sophomore Ebony Owusu-Sampah (Woodbridge, Va./C.D. Hylton) posted a mark of 5.68 meters.

In the 60-meter hurdles, sophomore De'Ana Forbes (Danville, Va./George Washington) and freshman Aereale Scott (Dallas, Texas/Plano West) finished back-to-back in second and third, respectively. Both runners had previously qualified for the ECAC meet in the event at the Navy Winter Invitational on Jan. 9, but Scott ran it in a career-best 8.66 seconds and now sits third in program history in the event. Forbes also finished in 8.66 seconds, as she edged Scott in the final standings by three one-thousandths of a second.

Scott followed up her performance in the hurdles with a fourth-place finish in the 60-meter dash. With a time of 7.84 seconds, she finished behind fellow JMU runner Annie Johnson (Medford, N.J./ Shawnee), who placed second with a time of 7.69 seconds. Johnson's mark passes her previous best at JMU, as she posted a time of 7.73 seconds in the event last season at the George Mason Last Chance meet on March 2, 2014.

Paired with three seniors, freshman Haley Mahn (Pennington, N.J./Hopewell Valley) joined Tiel Westbrook (Mechanicsville, Pa./Lee-Davis), Morgan Sheaffer (New Bloomfield, Pa./West Perry) and Kristen Landry (Boonton Township, N.J./Mountain Lakes) in the 4x800-meter relay to finish in a time of 9:16.31, surpassing the ECAC qualifying standard. The tandem finished nearly 12 seconds faster than the second-place relay from Navy.

In the distance medley, Madison freshman Erica Gray (Yardley, Pa./Pennsbury) opened the race and was followed by freshman Tyrah Burrow (Hampton, Va./Hampton), senior Kelsey Langton (Hamilton Square, N.J./Notre Dame HS) and sophomore Carol Strock (Mechanicsburg, Pa./Cumberland Valley) as the quad took first place in the event with an ECAC qualifying time of 12:01.74. Their finish was more than one minute faster than the second-place team out of George Mason.

Other notable results were a pair of fifth-place finishes by Burrow in the 400-meter dash and Johnson in the 200-meter dash. Burrow finished in 58.29 seconds in the 400 while Johnson posted a time of 25.58 seconds in her event. Owusu-Sampah and sophomore Nia Jones (Heathsville, Va./Northumberland) finished back-to-back in the triple jump with Owusu-Sampah finishing sixth with a mark of 11.03 meters and Jones putting up a jump of 10.79 meters, good for seventh.

The Dukes return to action on Friday, Feb. 6 in University Park, Pa., at the Sykes & Sabock Challenge Cup, hosted by Penn State University.