Little Rock Looks for More Records at SBC Championship

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LITTLE ROCK – The Little Rock track and field teams will test themselves against the best the Sun Belt Conference has to offer this weekend at the Sun Belt Outdoor Championship in Lafayette, La.
 
Twelve Trojan women and eight Trojan men will make the trip south to Ragin' Cajun country, hoping to break more personal bests and school records after an outdoor season full of them.

All told this season, four school records have been broken and 25 new marks have been entered into the top 10 in school history. This weekend's championship should see even more as the Trojans could reach some of their best scoring efforts at the Sun Belt meet in a decade.
 
Action kicks off Friday with some field events and the 10K races. Things continue Saturday with more field events, some distance event finals and shorter distance preliminary races. Relays, the rest of the track event finals and more field events will be held Sunday.
 
Live results are available online here, and live video can be found online for free at this address.
 
The Trojans' participation in this weekend's action begins on Friday night when Carli Langley and Isaac Lalang run in the 10K events at 8:30 p.m. Langley and Lalang each had the third-best 10K time in the Sun Belt this season.
 
The 100-meter dash will see school record holder Anika Charles joined by senior Rickitha Hicks in the women's race. Terance Goodwin will run the 100 for the men. Charles and Hicks ran the fifth- and seventh-fastest 100s in the Sun Belt this year.
 
The Trojans' roster for the 200 will be similar as Charles and Hicks will compete for the women while Kendrick Dunn and Dylan Wood will take part for the men. The duo of women were also fifth and seventh in the Sun Belt in 2016 in the 200.
 
In the women's 400, Bless Dupeh, Eboni Smith, Akeia Joyner and Jessica Gray will run for Little Rock. Michael Perry will join them on the men's side. At double that distance, Jasmine Blunt will be the Trojans' lone competitor in the 800. Dupeh's 400 time of 55.06 seconds is the third-fastest in the league this season.
 
Zodani Francois, a Sun Belt Track Student-Athlete of the Week earlier in the year, will run the 110 hurdles and 400-meter hurdles. Francois had the second-best 110 hurdles time in the league this season and its seventh-fastest 400 hurdles time. The women will be represented by Tyler Kelly in the 400-meter hurdles only.
 
In distance events, senior Emma Dahl and juniors Methuselah Lagat and Lalang will take on the 3K steeplechase. Dahl has the fastest time in the Sun Belt this year for the women while Lagat is seventh and Lalang is ninth on the men's side. The women's 1500 will see Noora Wallenius compete for a Sun Belt title after she put up the third-best time in the league this year just a week ago at the Arkansas Twilight Meet.
 
Dahl, Langley and Wallenius will also all compete in the 5K. Wallenius' 5K time this year is second-best in the Sun Belt while Dahl's is seventh. Lalang and Lagat will run the 5K for the men as well.
 
Desmond Gulley will be the Trojans' lone competitor in field events, taking part in the long jump and triple jump. Gulley is ranked third in Little Rock history in the long jump and triple jump outdoors.
 
Relay events will also see plenty of action from Trojan student-athletes. In the women's 4x100, the team of Dupeh, Hicks, Christina Nickerson and Charles will run to try to break their own school record. Their time of 46.03 seconds – set twice this year – is fourth-best in the league this season.
 
Action at the Sun Belt Championships will close on Sunday with the 4x400 relays. Dupeh, Charles, Gray and Hicks will make up one Trojan team while Blunt, Nickerson, Joyner and Smith will run on another. For the men, Perry, Dunn, Wood and Francois will run as the Trojans' relay group.