It was another impressive weekend for the Rowan indoor men’s track & field team, especially for senior Ahmir Johnson and the 4×400 meter relay team consisting of Amara Conte, Evan Corcoran, Nana Agyemang and Jah’mere Beasley.
Johnson, who turned in a top-five NCAA Division III mark for the triple jump earlier in the season, broke the school record for the long jump over the weekend. His mark of 7.38 meters broke Robert Beamen’s 32-year-old school record of 7.34 meters.
“It feels great,” Johnson said. “I knew I could do it and I knew that this was the meet to do it at… I just had the competition I needed to help me out and I just went out and performed. I believe that I have the potential to beat anyone that’s out there, and if I don’t, I know that I did the best I possibly could.”
Despite breaking the school record, Johnson placed third in the long jump event. Agyemang finished ninth, and in addition, Rowan was the lone Division III team to compete at the Columbia Challenge, held at the New York City Armory.
“When we asked to be in there, they said it was a Division I meet,” Head Coach Dustin Dimit said. “I told them who we had on our team and what their marks were, and they said they’d be happy to have us come. Our guys placed and scored in a number of things, they were top 10 in a number of things. So, they showed they belong there… It shows that we have the same type of athletes here as a lot of those programs do.”
The 4×400 meter relay team also placed third among many Division I teams, including UCLA, South Carolina and the University of Connecticut, but according to them, it was still not their best.
“Most of our guys thought that they should have run faster than they did,” Coach Dimit said. “That’s the nature of our sport, you always feel like you can do more, but we’re ahead of where we were at this time last year, so we’re pretty happy with where things are and really excited for two weeks from now.”
The Valentine Invitational held at Boston University is less than two weeks away, and it is the team’s main focal point at the moment. They hope to run their best that day in preparation for championship season.
“We’ll have a good meet this weekend,” Coach Dimit said. “We’ll do some different things, rest a couple of guys and make sure everyone is really healthy going into that [Boston]. And then conferences, regionals, nationals, which is where we really hit the meat of our schedule and expect those performances to start popping out. It’s great that we have the national lead in the 4×4 and the national lead in the long jump, but we know that better things are coming.”
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