2021 Indoor Gorilla Classic Results (Day 1)

PITTSBURG, Kan. – Opening the 2021 season in truly dramatic fashion, Academy of Art track & field highlighted the first day of the 6th Annual Indoor Gorilla Classic with a record-breaking effort in the distance medley relay. Elliot Slade, Omodiaogbe Oboh, Abdelouakil Mustapha, and James Young not only ran the fastest time of any Urban Knights quartet to date, but also punched their ticket to NCAA Division II Indoor Nationals inside Robert W. Plaster Center on Friday.

Combining for their first race as a foursome, Slade, Oboh, Mustapha, and Young delivered a 9:45.51 mark to win the day's DMR event by more than four seconds and better than the time that earned ART U four All-American honors last year (a team of which Young also anchored) by nearly five seconds. The Knights' result was the third-fastest run by any team in the division this year and impressively slotted them in at ninth in the NCAA DII record book.

The men were not the only one to make memorable debut as Marie-Jeanne Ourega won the day's long jump over 18 others essentially on her first attempt at 19-2.75 (5.86m). She saved her best for last, however, soaring to 19-9.5 (6.03m) on her sixth opportunity to ascend to second in Academy of Art history behind only multi-time Hall of Famer Vashti Thomas and to trigger Indoor Nationals provisional qualification. The mark was the second-farthest by a NCAA DII student-athlete thus far in 2021.

In other action, Audrey Rosencrans finished fourth out of 21 women who competed in the 5000m while Selena Arjona-Alcazar cracked the top 10 out of nearly 40 sprinters in the 200m.

Academy of Art will return for a busy second day of action in the Indoor Gorilla Classic tomorrow.