Taylor and Popp victorious in SoCon indoor championships

The University of Tennes- see at Chattanooga women’s track team finished seventh Sunday at the Southern Con- ference Indoor Championships hosted by East Tennessee State University in Johnson City.

UTC’s Kennedy Thomson came close to all-conference and all-freshman team honors, placing fourth with a time of 2 minutes, 17.79 seconds in the 800-meter finals. Also in the top 10 was UTC’s 4x400 relay team — all freshmen — with a time of 4:05.98 for eighth place.

“Overall we had very good performances and several PRs for our young team,” Mocs coach Andy Meyer said in a UTC release. “We have a long way to go, but we have a strong freshman group that showed promise this weekend.”

ETSU’s Patrick Taylor from Arts & Sciences won the Heath Whittle Award as the men’s most outstanding athlete after tallying 25 points in the meet to help the Buccaneers finish third with 137 points, behind Western Carolina (170) and Samford (155).

Taylor won the men’s long jump Saturday with a leap of 7.31 meters (24 feet, 3.75 inches), won the 200-meter dash Sunday with a time of 21.88 and was fourth in the 60 (6.90).

Also Saturday, Samford sophomore Selena Popp from Baylor School won the women’s pentathlon with a record 3,779 points, 344 more than the runner-up from Wofford.

Popp had a 9.37-second 60-meter hurdles, a 1.75-meter (5-8.75) high jump, an 11.13meter (26-6.25) shot put, a 5.77meter (18-11.25) long jump and a 2:33.85 800 in the pentathlon. The high jump, shot put and long jump were first-place finishes. She was fifth at 5.66 in the conference long jump competition later Saturday and first at 1.75 meters (5-8.75) in the high jump Sunday.

Samford won the women’s title with 208 points, ahead of Western Carolina (151.5) and ETSU (107.5).

Samford junior Victoria Wicks from Baylor was fourth in the 400-meter preliminaries and finished third in 57.46 Sunday.

ETSU’s Kiana Davis from Ooltewah finished fourth in the women’s 60 (7.63) and 200 (24.66) after qualifying third in both sprints Saturday.

UTC was sixth in the women’s distance medley relay Saturday with freshmen Nicole Buehrle, Julia Henderson, Abby Bateman and Thomson. Bateman was ninth and Henderson 12th in the 800 preliminaries, and the Mocs’ Brianna Nelson, Haley Morris and Anna Kate Chance were 11th, 13th and 14th in the 3000.