From Brandeis University Athetics
Brandeis track and field standout Irie Gourde continued his outstanding 2016-17 seasons at the University Athletic Association Outdoor Championships this weekend at the University of Chicago.
Gourde, a senior, earned multiple All-Association honors for the second time in 2017, having performed the feat indoor as well. He captured his third and fourth career silver medals with a pair of top-20 times in Division III this season. Gourde broke his own school record in the 200-meter run during the preliminaries with a time of 21.68 seconds, 0.04 out of the top seed. In the finals, he ran 21.81 seconds, second place by 0.1 seconds. In the 400-meter dash, Gourde ran the fastest prelim time, 49.39 seconds, then beat that by nearly a 1.5 seconds in the finals with a mark of 47.82 seconds. Though that was good for second place at the meet, it was the sixth-fastest time in Division III this season, making Gourde a likely candidate for the NCAA Championships. His prelim time in the 200 is 17th-fastest in Division III, which would also qualify him for the Championships.
Brandeis had one other All-UAA performance, as sophomore Regan Charie (Topsfield, Mass./Masconomet Regional) earned bronze in the 100-meter dash. After running 10.92 seconds in the prelims, the finals were an incredible photo finish, with Roderick Smith of WashU edging Chicago's Jatan Anand and Charie both by one-hundredth of a second. The margin between Anand and Charie was even slimmer, decided by a photo finish. This was his second career All-UAA honor, as he took third indoors in the 200. Charie also scored a point in that event outdoors, coming in eighth with a time of 22.81 seconds.
Charie also anchored Brandeis's best relay performance of the weekend, as the 4x100-meter team of rookie Lorenzo Maddox (Atlanta, Ga./Maynard Jackson), sophomore Henry McDonald (Weymouth, Mass./Weymouth), rookie Michael Kroker (Aumsville, Ore./Cascade) and Charie placed fourth with a time of 43.58 seconds, less than a second out of All-UAA contention.