The Illini men’s track and field team rode a string of solid performances from juniors Jonathan Wells and Devin Quinn, as well as senior David Kendziera ,to a second-place team finish at the Jim Click Shootout in Arizona.

Quinn’s 100- and 200-meter runs, Kendziera’s 110- and 400-meter hurdles and Well’s long and high-jump earned all three of them two event titles each. Additional victories from juniors Denis O’Callaghan and Dan Lathrop gave Illinois eight victories and 161 points. Arizona won the team competition with 171 points.

“Those three guys scored 68 non-relay points, and that’s outstanding,”  said head coach Mike Turk. “The performances they put up were national-level performances, so those three were particularly outstanding today.”

Marking 24’10” to start the competition, Wells set an outdoor personal best by clearing an additional inch and three quarters on his final attempt, finishing 24’11.75.”

Competition on the track began with the 110-meter hurdles, where Kendziera took home his first victory of the day with a time of 13.52 seconds. The victory yesterday marked the third straight for Kendziera this season. Wells, who hadn’t run a 110-meter hurdle race in two years, finished just under half a second behind Kendziera with a personal-best time of 13.97 seconds, to take the second place spot.

After that, Devin Quinn made his debut in the afternoon as the anchor for the 4×100-meter relay. The Illini finished first with a time of 39.99 seconds, making this the second time of the season that the unit ran a time under 40 seconds.

Junior Dennis O’Callaghan became the third Illini to win an event when he finished first in the 1500-meter run. After previously setting a personal best last weekend at the Stanford Invite, O’Callaghan again shaved two seconds off his time to set a new personal-best 3:50.

Quinn picked up his first individual event title of the afternoon in the 100-meter dash, running 10.21 seconds. He would win his second race of the day in the 200-meter dash shortly after, this time running for 20.53 seconds.

“I would say today’s performance excites me,” Quinn said. “Last week was the fastest I think I’ve ever ran in my life, and with that being said, there were a lot of setbacks. I was dealing with heavy wear on my body and trying to rebound from that is hard enough. Seeing my times today were interesting because I felt like I ran my races more aggressively this week, while recovering.”

Wells returned to the field to pick up his second victory of the day in high jump. Joining the contest in its final height, Wells cleared 7’0.25” on his second attempt to finish first.

Kendziera then picked up his second victory of the day in the 400-meter hurdles. Clocking in at 49.92 seconds, the first time Kendziera has finished a 400-meter hurdles event in under 50 seconds this season, and his third straight win this season.

Junior Dan Lathrop became the final Illini to win an event on the day when he won the 3000-meter run. He finished with a time of 8:39.77, while fellow junior Zach Dale ended runner-up with a time of 8:41.82.

Illinois concluded the day with a second-place finish in the 4×400-meter relay. The unit of junior Joe Haight, Kendziera, senior Parker Deloye and freshman Aaron Harris ran a season-best 3:12.53.

“When you think about how good you’d like to be throughout the year, there’s two things that are key,” Turk said. “The first thing is how your upperclassmen, especially your seniors, perform. Wells, Quinn and Kendziera are three of our most experienced guys, and they’re performing at a high level. The second part is how our supporting cast (develops). It’s come along good, but we’ve got a couple more weeks where we need to get things in place so that we know what we have for the end of the year.”

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