INDIANAPOLIS – Championship weekend at Cedarville is only 10 days away as Great Midwest Athletic Conference Men’s Indoor Track & Field Athletes of the Week awards were announced on Tuesday morning.
The Doden Field House will welcome all participating member institutions on Friday-Saturday for the 2021 Great Midwest Indoor Championships.
The full schedule of events, heat sheets and declaration forms will be released this week as teams make their way to the competition site on Thursday. The event is closed to fans per COVID-19 institutional protocol and the championships will be streamed in their entirety on the Great Midwest Digital Network.
Over the past weekend of competition, Findlay welcomed Hillsdale and Malone for a tri-meet on Saturday while Walsh was at an invitational hosted by Mount Vernon Nazarene. Cedarville engaged Ohio Wesleyan in an away dual and multiple teams were entered in the Grand Valley State-hosted Big Meet for Friday.
Teams have one more weekend of the regular season before getting ready to try and bring down meet records and compete for all-conference awards at Cedarville.
Men’s Indoor Track Athlete of the Week
Jamahl Burke
Hillsdale
Sprints
Freshman
Bridgetown, Barbados (Queens College)
Burke is just a freshman but made quite an impression while running the 400-meter dash and helping Hillsdale set a new conference record in the 4x400-meter relay at the GVSU Big Meet.
It was just Burke’s second attempt running the 400 in 2020-21 as he crossed the line in a time of 48.80 to finish fourth. Diving a little deeper, he was one of two freshmen in the field of 17 runners and the only ones to beat him were from Division I Eastern Michigan and Illinois State and one more from host GVSU.
While it was not quite a top-10 conference time in the record books, it was very close to a 47.97 needed to crack the list. And he figures to give Findlay star and incumbent favorite Xavier Marable (who recently competed in the American Track League in Arkansas) a really good race at the conference championships.
Burke was then part of the committee that brought down the 4x400 relay record previously held by Tiffin in 2020. In a provisional time of 3:14.98, it was Burke, Sean Fagan, Benu Mentijes and Ian Calvert, who are the new record holders.
Men’s Indoor Field Athlete of the Week
Sterling Mungro
Findlay
Throws
Junior
DeSoto, TX (DeSoto HS/Iowa Central CC)
It was a monster weekend for Mungro at the Oiler Invite as he set a new PR and auto qualified for nationals in the weight throw.
The junior tossed 21.24m (69’ 8.25”) to win the event. It is the top distance in the conference this season (league has five total provisional qualifiers) and it ranks No. 5 in the Great Midwest records.
For additional context, Mungro’s effort would have been good enough to win the 2019 NCAA Championship that was captured by former UF standout Austin Combs (21.22m).
Mungro is currently one of just three auto qualifiers in Division II, ranking second in the country.
Mungro also is a provisional qualifier in shot put and is currently No. 22 in Division II. This is his second conference field athlete of the week award for the current season.