The Milwaukee men’s track and field team is currently in second place after the first day of the Horizon League Indoor Championships at Purdue Fort Wayne. The Panthers have accumulated 33 points, trailing behind Youngstown State, which leads with 83 points.
The day’s events began with the heptathlon, where Liam Richards leads with 3014 points after four events. He reached a distance of 7.09 meters in the long jump, placing him tenth on the school’s indoor leaderboard. The heptathlon will conclude tomorrow with three more events.
Evan Bartelsen achieved a podium finish in the pole vault by clearing 4.70 meters, securing second place. In the long jump, Anthony Buford also finished as runner-up with a leap of 7.20 meters, marking the sixth-best performance in program history. Buford also advanced to Sunday’s final round in the 400m dash with a time of 51.22 seconds.
In other field events, Jeremiah Johnson took fourth place in the weight throw with a toss of 16.45 meters.
On the track, Jaelyn Reeves-Lile topped preliminary rounds in both the 60m (6.74 seconds) and 200m (21.88 seconds) dashes and will compete in finals on Sunday.
Lucas Picco led prelims for the 800m run at 1:54.44, followed by Karsten Grundahl at third place with a time of 1:56.62.
Iyimi Fagbamiye qualified for finals after finishing third-best in preliminaries for the 60m hurdles at 8.11 seconds; Nate Taylor (8.45), Ethan Criter (8.79), and Ethan Mitchell (9.60) will join him in Sunday’s finals.
Nate Taylor will also compete in Sunday’s finals for the 400m dash following his prelim time of 51.47 seconds.
The championship meet continues tomorrow starting at 8:00 a.m., beginning with heptathlon’s final three events and continuing through various field and track events available to watch on ESPN+ from noon onwards.
