BATON ROUGE — Arizona’s defending NCAA champion Jake Arnold won all 10 events in the decathlon en route to posting a new personal best score of 7,946 points and claiming the event title at the LSU Combined Events on Friday at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium.
Arnold, who won the national title after scoring 7,870 points in the event at the NCAA Outdoor Championships a year ago, took top honors in five events on Friday as he closes in on the school record for the University of Arizona.
Senior multi-event standout and SEC pentathlon champion Shaunette Davidson was the top performer for the LSU track and field teams as she finished fourth in the women’s heptathlon competition after qualifying provisionally for the NCAA meet with a total of 5,052 points.
The native of Manchester, Jamaica, kicked off the afternoon by finishing second in the long jump with a leap of 19 feet, 11 ? inches followed by an eighth-place finish in the javelin with a throw of 72-6 and a ninth-place finish in the 800-meter run with a time of 2 minutes, 43.19 seconds.
Arizona also boasted the event champion in the heptathlon as Shevell Quinley took top honors by accumulating an NCAA automatic qualifying score of 5,532 points over the course of seven events. Quinley finished first in both the long jump and 800 meters on Friday with marks of 20-5 and 2:25.81, respectively, while also finishing third in the javelin with a throw of 111-2.
LSU’s Eric Radecker earned a fifth-place finish in the decathlon competition with 5,528 points, while teammate Gavin Fleming followed closely behind in sixth place with 5,282 points for the meet.
Radecker, who entered the final day of competition alone in second place, was unable to record a height in the pole vault while also finishing second in the 110-meter hurdles (15.27), fourth in the javelin (145-6) and sixth in both the discus (90-5) and 1,500 meters (5:15.28).
Fleming performed well on Friday with a third-place finish in the pole vault after clearing a height of 13-5 ?, while also finishing fourth in the 110-meter hurdles (15.82) and discus (97-10) followed by a pair of fifth-place finishes in the javelin (125-11) and 1,500-meter run (5:10.22).
The Tigers and Lady Tigers return to the track on Saturday as they play host to 15 collegiate teams in this year’s edition of the LSU Tiger Classic at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium. The meet is scheduled to get underway with the field events at 11:30 a.m. followed by the afternoon’s first running events at 2:30 p.m.