Nwanonyiri, Richardson Headline Day 1 of NJACs

GALLOWAY, N.J. | The Rutgers University-Newark men's track and field team kicked off its appearance in the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) Championships today with a number of trial events on the track and final competitions in the field at Stockton University. In the field, Chibundu Nwanonyiri earned the Scarlet Raiders first points of the competition as he placed fourth in the long jump. His distance of 6.71 meters on his second attempt was good for five points. Eriq Royal was R-N's top performer in the javelin, placing 11th with a distance of 46.89 meters while Izaiah Guthridge had the best hammer throw at 34.81 meters. On the track, Jeremiah Richardson was the star as he secured a place in the finals of both the 400-meter intermediate hurdles and 110-meter high hurdles. In the 400 IH, Richardson won the qualifiers heat in 54.61 seconds, just two-hundredths of a second ahead of the runner up. The rookie phenom was the runner up in the 110 HH qualifier in 14.81 seconds, a little more than three-tenths of a second behind the top hurdler. Jaden Monroe rounded out the Raiders qualifiers as he came in ninth in the 200-meter dash but earned automatic qualification to the finals tomorrow after sprinting a time of 23.35 seconds. Clinton Adu-Agyei just missed out on a place in the 100-meter finals, finishing ninth in 11.40 seconds which put him only .14 ticks away from a qualifying time.