Track and Field Brings Home Another Trophy for Title Town
The 2020-2021 Alabama Athletic season came to a close on Saturday evening after the Track and Field teams finished with individual championships and top-15 placings at the Outdoor Track and Field National Championship in Eugene, Oregon.
The men's team finished 13th overall with 18 points and made it the Tide's fourth consecutive top 15 overall finish. Senior Robert Dunning dominated the 110-meter hurdles to win the national title with a time of 13.25, just one-hundredth of a second off the school record he set at the NCAA East Preliminary. Dunning finished ahead of his closest competitor by more than a tenth of a second.
According to Alabama Athletics, Dunning is Alabama's fourth 110-meter hurdles champion since Keith Talley in 1986 and Ron Bramlett in 2001 and 2002. Dunning is also the first member of the men's team to win an outdoor national title since Hayden Reed in the discus and the first member of the men's team to win a national title.
Ryan Lipe scored first for the Crimson Tide after a sixth-place finish in the pole vault. On Friday, freshman Eliud Kipsang ran the 1500 meters and finished in fourth place. Christian Edwards came in at 11th place in the triple jump with a leap of 16.15 meters, while Keshun McGee placed 23rd with a leap of 15.34 meters.
The women's team closed out their season on Saturday with an overall fourth-place finish with 31 points. This marked the program's first podium appearance since 1987 and the third-highest outdoor finish since the Crimson Tide won second back-to-back years in 1986 and 1987.
On Thursday, Mercy Chelangat placed second in the 10,000 meters to put the women's team on the board. Tamara Clark led the Tide on Saturday with a pair of top-three finishes in the 100 and 200 meters. Clark took second in the 200 meters by five hundredths of a second and third in the 100 meters. Chelangat scored again with a fifth- place finish in the 5,000 meters and a seventh-place finish from Amaris Tyynismaa in the 1,500 meters.
The women's program finished fourth overall and marked the fifth top-five outdoor finish for the Tide since the first women's championship in 1982 and their second top-10 finish in a row after taking seventh place in 2019. With the Track and Field season officially season over, the 2020-2021 athletic season has come to a close and has been one to remember.