HPU’s Faure Wins Big South Championship Decathlon

LYNCHBURG, Va. — Junior Tristan Faure of the High Point University men’s track & field team won the decathlon with a school-record 7,002 points on Friday in Lynchburg, Va. It was HPU’s first-ever championship in that event.

Weather forced major schedule changes and the women’s and men’s steeplechases are slated for 10 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. on Friday night, respectively.

Through seven events and not including the steeplechase, HPU ranked fifth with 25 points, just ahead of sixth-place Charleston Southern. Liberty was leading with 78 points followed by VMI (44), Coastal Carolina (41) and Gardner-Webb (26).

Faure’s score of 7,002 crushed his previous HPU record of 6,633 points from last year’s Big South Championship. He started Friday’s events with a win in the decathlon 110-meter hurdles, running a wind-aided time of 14.98. He went on to throw the discus 36.16 meters (118-8) and clear 4.06 meters (13-3.75) in the pole vault, taking second in both events. He threw the javelin 44.29 meters (145-4) and capped off the event with a time of 4:26.15 in the 1,500-meter.

In Friday’s preliminaries, junior Evan Emery, freshmen Eddie Whitlock and Dennis Crawford and senior Ryan Venable all advanced to finals on Saturday. Emery posted the fastest time in the 100-meter dash (10.23) and second-fastest in the 200-meter dash (20.94) and won his heat of both events. The times were very fast but wind-aided.

Crawford advanced to Saturday’s finals in both the 110-meter hurdles and 400-meter hurdles and he’ll be joined in the 110-meter hurdles by Venable. Venable finished third among 110-meter hurdle qualifiers with a time of 14.51. Whitlock won his heat of the 800-meter with a time of 1:55.30, outkicking Liberty’s Trevor Hope in the last 200 meters to advance.

Redshirt-senior Corey Law, who joined the track & field team after completing his collegiate basketball career, cleared 1.79 meters (5-10.5) in the high jump to place 14th. Freshmen Adam DeVito and Jordan Carr also competed in the high jump, clearing 1.84 meters (6-0.5) and finishing ninth and 12th, respectively.

On Thursday, sophomore Christian Spaulding was runner-up in the javelin and freshmen Paddy Grandinali and Cody Seymour placed fifth and sixth, respectively, in the 10,000-meter.

Saturday’s action begins with the men’s discus at 10 a.m. and the first running event is the 4×100 relay at 12:40 p.m. The meet wraps up with the 4×400 relay at 4:30 p.m.