Date Posted: 5/16/2008

CLEMSON, S.C. - On the heels of an unexpected win and expected dominance in the lone distance event of the night, Belmont leads the field of eight after the first day of the 2008 Atlantic Sun Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championship from Clemson’s Rock Norman Track and Field Complex.

The Bruins scored an unforeseen win in the hammer throw as Joe Frye uncorked a throw of 49.71m to beat his closest competitor, Gardner-Webb’s Joshua McNair by less than half a meter. Belmont added 17 points to its total in the final event of the day, the 10,000-meter run. John Brigham led the Bruins pack with a second-place finish followed by Jacob Buckman in third. Caleb Swartz took fifth and Kevin Stone placed sixth. ETSU’s Kenneth Rotich won the event in a record time of 31:03.19.

“We were hoping to get off to a good start, but we got off to a better start than anticipated,” Belmont head coach Jeff Langdon said. “Joe Frye won the hammer was a big surprise. We knew he could do well, but certainly we were not counting on his points. To get fourth place in the javelin from a baseball player was pretty nice also. As well as we did in the 10K, Lucas McAneney from Gardner-Webb ran a great race…he broke up our pack, otherwise we would have been 2-3-4-5.”

Gardner-Webb finished the day in second place, eight points behind Belmont. Jeremy Longshore opened the championship with a bang, tying his own record in the pole vault with a mark of 4.70m. The senior from Pacolet, S.C., 75 miles from Clemson, concluded his outdoor career with the top three marks in A-Sun Championship history. In 2006, he, along with teammate Elliot Haynie recorded the third-best vault in conference history, clearing 4.60m. Longshore’s teammate, Jerel Langley also found his way into the record as the unleashed a throw of 64.28m in the javelin, breaking a record set at the inaugural Outdoor Championship by FIU’s Jeff Burke (62.00m in 1996) and one year after falling a half meter short of the record.

Rotich’s record-setting win in the 10,000 and Josh Cloyd’s second-place finish in the long jump accounted for 18 of the Buccaneers’ 26.5 first-day points. Campbell’s Sam Tilly repeated as long jump championship with a jump of 7.88m as the Camels sit in fourth, three points behind ETSU. Kennesaw State rounds out the top five with 23 points, highlighted by McNair’s second place in the hammer and Casey Strickland’s second in the javelin.

In a repeat of the Indoor Track and Field Championship, USC Upstate’s Perrish Goggins will carry the overnight lead in the men’s multi-event competition. He used wins in the 100-meter hurdles and the high jump to build a 42-point lead in the decathlon on his nearest competitor, Belmont’s Matt Fiedler. At the Indoor Championships in Johnson City, Tenn., Goggins led the heptathlon after the first day, only to finish second to Gardner-Webb’s Elliot Haynie.

“Just like the [heptathlon, day one is] most of my strong events,” Goggins said. “But day two often is the [events] that I really don’t really do well in because they really aren’t my events. I plan on doing the best I can.”

The men's championship concludes on Saturday with the second half of the decathlon, the high jump, the shot put, the steeplechase, the 400-meter relay, the 1,500-meter run, the triple jump, the discus throw, the 110-meter hurdles, the 400-meter dash, the 100-meter dash, the 800-meter run, the 400-meter hurdles and the 200-meter dash, the 5,000-meter run and wrapping up with the 1,600-meter relay.

The Atlantic Sun Conference is a 12-member league committed to Building Winners for Life, with a focus on academic and athletic integrity and a balance between the two for the student-athlete, and maintaining a high level of sportsmanship. Headquartered in Macon, Ga., the A-Sun encompasses six of the top eight media markets in the Southeast. The A-Sun consists of some of the most dynamic private and public institutions in the region: Belmont University, Campbell University, East Tennessee State University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Gardner-Webb University, Jacksonville University, Kennesaw State University, Lipscomb University, Mercer University, University of North Florida, University of South Carolina Upstate and Stetson University.

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