BATON ROUGE — Northwestern State hurdler Mike Hill made a bid to crack the national top 20 rankings Saturday at the LSU Alumni Gold track and field meet, running a third-place 13.95 in the invitational division of the 110 meter hurdles.
Hill shaved 0.06 off his season’s best from last week at Florida State that ranked 22nd this week. His new time is 18th fastest nationally pending other results from the weekend. The only faster finishers at LSU Saturday were Ryan Fontenot, running for Tiger Olympians, winning in 13.70, and Texas A&M’s De’Lon Isom in 13.74, not an improvement over his 13.71 time that ranks fourth nationally.
In the university division of the 110 meter hurdles, NSU’s P.J. Bennett had a season’s best 14.48 and was third in his race. Their finishes were among five third-places for Northwestern, which did not send All-America javelin thrower Cody Fillinich or nationally-ranked 400 meter runner Mike Green into individual competition.
Green did run on the Demons’ 4x400 meter relay team which was half a second behind its nationally-ranked 3:08.21 best (19th), finishing fouth at LSU behind Texas A&M, LSU and the Tiger Olympians.
Also notching third places were Lady Demon thrower DeJon Griffin in the hammer (175-10), Corey Jones in the men’s shot put (55-10 1/4, a season’s best and the third-best mark in the Southland Conference), and Andrea Warren in the women’s 800 meters (2:14.95).
Carmen Wallace ran fourth in the women’s 400 meter hurdles (1:05.03). Jessica Tuck was fifth in the women’s long jump (18-8).
NSU picked up sixth place performances by Courtney Herschberger in the women’s 3000 meter steeplechase (13:14.81) and Calvin Smith in the triple jump (46-8 3/4, a season’s best).
Seventh from NSU with season-best marks were Kennis Byars in the high jump (6-6 3/4) and Morgan Redmond in the shot put (50-1 1/4). Also posting a season-best performance was Leslie Jordan, eighth in the women’s shot put (45-1).
Northwestern plays host to the NSU Invitational next Saturday at the Walter Ledet Track Complex.