North Texas Daily

Alexis Trinidad | Staff Writer

The North Texas Track & Field Team traveled to Oklahoma this weekend to compete in the JD Martin Invitational, their fourth indoor meet of the season, and the Mean Green gave a glimpse at what’s ahead this season after a successful performance.

“[I’m] very excited about our individual finishes against this competition,” head coach Carl Sheffield said, “It gives a good example as to where we are in training right now.”

Sophomore James Cole took the title in the 200-meter dash event with a time of 22.11, knocking 32 seconds off his time (22.43) from last week’s meet in Kansas.

After a significant amount of preparation, freshman CJ Gilmore finished his first indoor meet with a second-place finish in high jump (2.11m).

“He’s outstanding and he really shows up when it’s time to compete,” Sheffield said.

Freshman Florian Lussy received second place in the mile with a time of 4:16:38 in just her second time placing in a distance event. He finished third in the men’s 3000m at the Aggie Team Invitational earlier this month and has shown the ability to improve moving forward.

Freshmen Howard Grant and Jazmine Martin both placed in long jump, as Grant took third in the men’s with a jump of 6.94m while Martin took third in the women’s at 5.26m.

Sophomore Blake Skoog and freshman Bailey Ashmore had strong showings in the pole vaulting. The women jumped their best record thus far, with Skoog at 3.55m and Ashmore at 3.40m. Both moved up a rank in the Conference USA standings.

Sheffield plans on competing at a championship this season and hopes to have athletes place in each category in order to earn more points to qualify.

“We want to try to keep filling any holes in any events we haven’t done,” Sheffield said.

With high hopes – and eyes on inching towards the championship – the team iill return to action next weekend at Wichita State’s Herm Wilson Invitational in Kansas.