Berry leads Southeast's contingent at regional

~ The Redhawks' junior long jumper finished 10th overall.

Long jumper John Berry and the 1,600-meter relay team turned in Southeast Missouri State's top performances over the weekend at the NCAA Mideast Regional track and field meet in Columbia, Mo.

Berry, a junior, finished 10th out of 38 competitors in the long jump with a distance of 23 feet, 11 inches. The winning jump was 24-10 1/2.

The 1,600 relay team of freshman David Reid, junior Chris Poindexter, freshman Myron Pettigrew and sophomore Chris Williams was 10th in a field of 22 with a time of 3 minutes, 10.09 seconds. The winning time was 3:04.49.

Only the top five finishers in each individual event and the top three in the relays qualify for the NCAA national meet.

Freshman thrower Brandon Colbert, a regional qualifier in two events, placed 30th in Saturday's shot put (50-5 1/4). He was 17th in Friday's discus (163-10).

Sophomore Juli Koenegstein finished 15th in the 3,000 steeplechase (10:49.17).

On Friday, sophomore Brandon Karcher was 24th in the 5,000 (15:05.61) and senior Lindsay Zeiler failed to qualify for the finals in the 1,500. She was 21st in the preliminaries (4:33.06).

Gymnast nabs honor

Southeast sophomore gymnast Sandra Blake was named to the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District Team as voted on by members of College Sports Information Directors of America recently.

Blake has a perfect 4.0 grade-point average in her first two seasons at Southeast. She's majoring in accounting.

Blake was an all-Midwest Independent Conference selection this year and qualified for the NCAA South Central Regional.

Blake is now eligible for Academic all-America honors, which will be announced Wednesday.