BATON ROUGE – LSU’s Michael Cherry and Renard Howell brought back three medals from the North American, Central American & Caribbean Under-23 Championships this weekend as Cherry won gold in the 4×400-meter relay and silver in the 400-meter dash for the United States and Howell won silver in the 4×100-meter relay for Jamaica.
Cherry and Howell were among the best U-23 athletes from North American, Central America and the Caribbean to compete at the 2016 NACAC U-23 Championships held in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Cherry earned the right to represent Team USA on the strength of an outstanding junior season in which he emerged as one of the elite 400-meter sprinters in the United States with his performance during the NCAA Championships and U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials both held at Oregon’s Hayward Field in Eugene.
The Chesapeake, Virginia, native recently joined the 44-second club when he ran a personal best of 44.81 seconds in the 400-meter semifinals at the U.S. Olympic Trials to become one of the five fastest Tigers to run in the event in school history. That was after he set his previous personal best of 45.11 to finish as the NCAA Outdoor Bronze Medalist as one of the best collegians in 2016.
Cherry proved himself once more with a silver-medal-winning run of 45.50 in Saturday’s 400-meter final to finish as the NACAC U-23 runner-up to Jamaican Nathan Allen (45.39) and win his first medal for Team USA for the weekend. St. Kitts & Nevis international Warren Hazel rounded out the medalists in the men’s 400-meter dash with a time of 45.81 for the bronze medal.
That was just a warm up for Cherry as he returned to action on Sunday and anchored the United States to the NACAC U-23 gold medal in the men’s 4×400-meter relay with a winning run of 3 minutes, 0.89 seconds.
Lol time flies when you having fun 💀💀💀😩🙈 pic.twitter.com/d75Lscha0a
— miguel la cereza ♨️ (@Cherry_Rus) July 17, 2016
Teaming with Stillman College’s Dontavious Wright, Texas A&M’s Robert Grant and Cal State Los Angeles’ Khalifah Rosser in in the relay final, Cherry brought the team home with a more than three-second victory over Jamaica to win the gold medal in the final event of the meet. Jamaica followed in 3:04.11 for the silver medal, while Bahamas bagged the bronze medal with a time of 3:04.74 for third place overall.
Jamaica swept the NACAC U-23 silver medals in both men’s relays as Howell anchored his country to a runner-up finish in the men’s 4×100-meter relay in 39.25 in the final event of Saturday’s schedule. Howell was part of a team that also featured Ajamu Graham, Nathan Allen and Rohan Cole as they were second only to the United States with a winning time of 38.63, while Bahamas was again third in the race with a time of 39.85.
Howell capped his 2016 season in Sunday’s NACAC U-23 Championships finale when he placed seventh in the men’s 200-meter final with a time of 21.45 (+0.8) after qualifying with a time of 20.97 (+0.7) in the semifinal round on Saturday.