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St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Lee Enterprises

Wednesday, April 2, 2008 11:09 PM CDT
Eastern track teams ready for own Big Blue Classic

BY BRIAN NIELSEN, Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com

CHARLESTON -- One week after bursting into the front of Eastern Illinois’ track scene, Brenton Emanuel wants to show last week was no one-time flash.

“Brenton Emanuel had an outstanding meet last week, winning the 100 and 200,” Eastern coach Tom Akers said. “He and I are both sort of baffled about where that came from, but we were happy.”

Now, maybe other Panthers are ready to emerge in this week’s annual Big Blue Classic Invitational at O’Brien Stadium.

Competition is to begin at 10 a.m. today with the women’s heptathlon and men’s decathlon. The Neil Moore Multi Events are to resume at 9:30 a.m. Friday with the rest of the meet to start with 2 p.m. field events and 4 p.m. distance-oriented running events.

Saturday is the conclusion of the meet with field events to start at 10:30 a.m., running preliminaries at 11 a.m. and finals to run from 12:40 p.m. through the 4:30 p.m. 4x400-meter relay

Indiana State, Illinois State and Wisconsin-Milwaukee are the NCAA Division I schools expected along with four junior colleges and three small colleges.

However, unlike in last week’s EIU Invitational when the Panther women won their triangular and the men were second to Indiana State, no team scores are to be kept this week.

That allows for individuals to concentrate on key performances as the Eastern teams look toward repeating their championships at next month’s Ohio Valley Conference outdoor meet at Southeast Missouri after both were dethroned in this year’s indoor competition.

Eastern is not to be represented today in the heptathlon that has six women entered or the decathlon with seven men.

“It’s not a conference event for us and you have to do a lot of training for those,” Akers said. “For a lot of schools they take kids who have some potential and try them in our meet for the first time.”

Come Friday Eastern has some good expectations with three of the four members back from last year’s school record setting 4x800-meter men’s relay team and the group that set the school’s freshman 4x800 record indoors this year.

The Panther women’s highlights could include the 400 intermediate hurdles, mixed into Friday’s distance and throws carnival.

“I’m pretty excited about hour our kids performed last week,” Akers said. “Chandra Golden and Sam Manto had good races in the 400 hurdles and we’re looking for more of that.”

Those two placed first and second respectively in the EIU Invitational hurdles while Violet Nwordu won the 100- and 200- meter dashes and Kandace Arnold won the discus and shot put with a discus throw of 137 feet, 1 inch to rank ninth on the school’s all-time list.

Eastern’s men have Emanuel, who appears recovered from off-season knee surgery winning the 100 dash in 10.77 seconds last week and the 200 in 21.63 while freshman pole vaulter Joe Noonan was named the OVC Field Athlete of the Week after winning his event at 15-1 last Saturday.

Contact Brian Nielsen at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856.

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