Published: May 12, 2008 12:10 am            

Dennis, Courtney help SHSU men sneak into fourth-place finish

After some solid performances in the final day of the Southland Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships, the Sam Houston State men’s team showed some stark improvement from the squad that finished ninth at the indoor championships in late February.

The men’s team finished fourth much to the delight of Bearkats head coach Curtis Collier at the York Track and Field Complex at Bowers Stadium on Sunday.

“I’m really pleased with the improvement,” Collier said. “We have a lot of young athletes and you never know what they’re going to do. I’m proud of the men for finishing fourth when we could’ve just as easily been sixth or seventh or ninth like we were in Indoors. But now we’re looking forward to the region meet where we hope to get some guys qualified for the outdoor national championships. That’s kind of the goal.”

Leading the way for the Bearkats was juniors Lane Dennis and Michael Courtney.

Dennis went into Sunday with the top time in the 400-meter hurdles and ended up winning the gold medal in 50.63 seconds and repeating as Southland champion.

He also met a personal goal of lowering his time, improving from 50.87 seconds in Saturday’s preliminaries. In doing so, he also qualified for the Olympic trials beating the “B” standard time of 51.00 seconds.

“It felt good,” Dennis said. “I knew I could come out here and do it. I’m ready to take it to the midwest regional in Nebraska. I just thank God and my family.”

Courtney also won gold after winning the 400-meter dash with a time of 46.85 seconds to repeat as conference champion.

“It means a lot to me,” Courtney said. “I feel so blessed. I want to thank God. If someone were to tell me three years ago that I would’ve been here, I would’ve laughed right in their face.

“I’m just real thankful. I was confident that if I did what I could and ran a good race that I would be right up there among the top three. I just had enough kick in me to finish the race strong.”

Dennis and Courtney continued their winning ways and came from out of nowhere to win the 4-by-400 relay and qualify for the Midwest Regional. The SHSU men’s relay team came into Sunday’s final with the fifth-best time in the preliminaries.

In Sunday’s final, the Bearkats relay team trailed Northwestern State’s bunch down the stretch, but in the final 100 meters, Courtney kicked into another gear and blew past the Demons’ Michael Green to give SHSU first place. The victory gave the Bearkats enough points (86) to move into fourth place in the team standings ahead of Stephen F. Austin (83.5).

Texas-San Antonio won the overall title with 138.5, followed by Southeastern Louisiana (129) and Texas-Arlington (106).

Dennis wasn’t the only medalist in the 400 hurdles as freshman Darryl Hayes finished just behind Dennis with a time of 47.15 seconds for second place.

Earlier in the day, the men’s 4-by-100 relay team qualified for the regionals with a 40.39 second showing in the race, which was good enough for third place.

Freshman Travis Matthews also gave SHSU something to look forward to after winning the silver medal in the pole vault with a height of 5.05 meters.

        

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