COMPLETE RESULTS
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Senior Josh Morgan won the 800-meter and placed second in the mile and senior Jesse Cherry won the 5,000-meter and placed second in the 3,000-meter to lead the High Point University men's track & field team to a fourth-place finish at the Big South Indoor Track & Field Championship on Sunday in Clemson, S.C. Morgan was named Big South Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

"Overall it as a very good team performance, but we were disappointed we ended up five points out of third place," said HPU head coach Mike Esposito. "Josh Morgan won a very tactical 800-meter and controlled it most of the way. Beating [Felix] Kitur from VMI is a good win, he's one of the better 800 runners in the country. Jesse Cherry ran a very controlled 5K and tried to take Neal Darmody along. Neal had a pretty good PR (personal record) in that event."

Liberty won the meet with 192 points followed by Charleston Southern (122), VMI (85), High Point (80), Radford (78), Winthrop (54), Gardner-Webb (36) and UNC Asheville (14).

Morgan took the 800-meter in a time of 1:53.38, beating out Issac Wendland of Liberty (1:53.59) and VMI's  Kitur. Morgan led the first half of the race, with Kitur taking the lead around the 500-meter mark. Morgan came back to win it with about 60 meters left. HPU's Corey Grove took sixth in the 800-meter in 1:57.39. Morgan came back in the mile and challenged Liberty All-American Sam Chelanga, eventually taking second in 4:14.05. HPU junior Jevin Monds was right behind Morgan, placing third in 4:14.46.

Cherry won the 5,000-meter in 14:16.01 on Sunday after placing second to Chelanga in the 3,000-meter on Saturday. Cherry's 14:16.01 was a new Big South meet record, besting the previous mark of 14:25.39 by Liberty's Jordan McDougal in 2008.

Sophomore Neal Darmody had a very strong championship in the same events as Cherry, as Darmody placed third in the 5,000-meter in a career-best 14:33.70 on Sunday after placing fourth in the 3,000-meter in 8:28.19 the day before. Freshman Dakota Peachee placed sixth in both the mile (4:21.17) and 3,000-meter (8:38.33). He won the second head of the 3,000 to break into the scoring. Freshman Stuart Edmonds took seventh in the 5,000 in 15:32.32. Mike Ali was close behind in 15:33.22 to place 10th.

In the relays, High Point University's distance medley team of Jacob Smith, Josh Cashman, Morgan and Monds placed second to Liberty on Saturday in 10:09.39. The Flames finished in 10:06.90. In the 4x400-meter relay on Sunday, HPU's team of Cashman, Morgan, Alex Ruano and Sebastien Bonnot took eighth in 3:28.91.

HPU had two athletes score in the field events as Jacob Mathews took fifth in the pole vault with a height of 14'5.25 to finish a notch ahead of TJ Brancaccio. Brancaccio returned from a leg injury to place sixth with a height of 13'11.25.

Along with his success on the track, Morgan has a 3.86 grade point average in Physical Education and was voted Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Javon Young from Charleston Southern picked up the Most Outstanding Track Performer as he finished No. 1 in the 60-meter and second in the 200-meter event. The men's Most Outstanding Field Performer was Liberty's Clarence Powell, who placed first in the high jump and triple jump and finished second in the long jump.

HPU will take select athletes to the Virginia Tech Last Qualifier on March 6 in Blacksburg, Va.