UGA Wins National Title In Men's Track & Field
EUGENE, Ore. - The Bulldogs captured their first national team track and field title with 52 points at the NCAA Championships in Eugene, Ore., on Friday.
This team title for the Bulldog men comes three months after the Lady Bulldogs captured their first team title at the 2018 NCAA Indoor Championships.
After leaving the University of Oregon by matching a program best sixth-place finish in 2017, eight scorers, including junior Denzel Comenentia who swept the hammer throw and shot put, propelled the Georgia men to UGA’s first national championship on the men’s side since men’s tennis in 2008 and the 14th crown overall for the Georgia men.
In Friday’s action, senior Cejhae Greene, who was ninth and missed the final at the 2017 NCAA Championships, shot across the 100-meter dash finish line in 10.37 to take seventh. This bumped the Bulldogs’ total up two points and gave him his second expected First Team All-American certificate in 2018 after taking fourth in the 60m indoors. Greene becomes the first Bulldog scorer in the 100m since Manley Waller in 1987.
Finishing nearly simultaneously, the Bulldogs then had a combined three more scorers in the high jump and 200m. Junior Keenon Laine went over the high jump bar at 7-3 to take third while freshman Antonios Merlos shocked the field by clearing a personal record of 7-1.75 to take fifth on the slick high jump apron.
Meanwhile, junior Kendal Williams shot across the 200m finish line in 20.32 to take third and pump up his team’s total by another six points.
During Thursday’s action, senior Karl Saluri rounded out his Bulldog career with a personal record to take second in the decathlon and freshman Johannes Erm posted the top tally of his career to finish third after 10 events.
On Wednesday, Comenentia swept the hammer throw and shot put for only the third time in NCAA history to give the Bulldogs two national individual champions outdoors in the same season for the first time.
Other than the decathlon running Wednesday-Thursday and the heptathlon going Friday-Saturday, the meet was set up to be a men’s competition on Wednesday and Friday and a women’s competition on Thursday and Saturday.