Holmes and Mills Bring Home All-American Indoor Track Honors

Release Date: March 13, 2001

Monmouth College’s Eric Holmes shattered his own school record in the shot put on his way to a second-place finish in the nation Saturday at the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships in Oshkosh, Wis.

The top six finish makes Holmes an All-American, and that status was also attained Saturday by Cort Mills, who placed fourth in the high jump competition. It was the first time that the athletes, both seniors, had earned the honor indoors, although Mills was an outdoor All-American in 1999.

If the two were asked what they were doing to celebrate, they could have truthfully answered, "We’re going to DisneyWorld!" The Fighting Scots track teams are currently training in Florida at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex. They will compete in a meet with approximately 15 other schools on Friday and Saturday.

Monmouth has never had two male indoor All-Americans in the same season, although Charles Burton did earn the honor in two different events in 1992. The Scots’ 12 points earned them a 10th-place finish in the nation and was the most points they had ever scored at the national indoor meet.

"That’s certainly a goal for our program," said coach Roger Haynes of the top 10 finish. "We’ve been there once before with Charles Burton, Jeff McCraven, Steve Hartman and that group back in 1992 (placing seventh at the outdoor meet). This group can certainly improve upon 10th place outdoors if they set their minds to it."

In the preliminaries, Holmes established a new mark of 56’3-1/4. His old record was 55’1-3/4. Entering the finals, Holmes was leading the competition by nearly a foot, but UW-LaCrosse freshman Jim Nelson uncorked a 57’5-3/4 heave to take the national title.

"Eric was one of the littler guys competing," said Haynes. "The kid that beat him was ranked as one of the two top throwers in the nation in high school last year. Eric’s definitely happy with his performance. We’ve said all along that if you take care of your business at a meet, that’s all you can do. We expected that Nelson might make a challenge in the final round, but it was too much to ask for Eric to throw two lifetime bests at the same meet."

Mills, meanwhile, was one of four high jumpers to clear 6’9-3/4, the second-highest leap at the competition behind national champion Shannon King of UW-Oshkosh, who jumped 6’11-3/4. However, Mills fell to fourth on misses, but Haynes said that didn’t tell the whole story.

"People won’t realize what a great meet Cort had," said the coach. "He cleared 6’4, 6’6 and 6’8 without a miss, then cleared 6’9-3/4 on his second try. Two of his three atempts at 6’11-3/4 were very good jumps. Both Cort and Eric were very, very well prepared at the meet."

Saturday proved to be a much better day for the Fighting Scots contingent than Friday. All five entries for Monmouth came up short in qualifying Friday, including Constance Jackson, who was competing in three individual events and a relay. In the morning, Jackson long jumped 17’9-1/2 to place 12th out of 17 entrants.

"That was her second-best long jump of the year, so there was no problem there," said Haynes.

Her 1:01.99 clocking was 13th out of 14 competitors in the 400-meter dash, and Haynes said Jackson suffered some misfortune.

"She got stepped on from behind, and the girl that did it got disqualified," said Haynes. "That threw Constance off. Then we knew the 55 would be a throwaway race, because it came just 20 minutes after the 400."

Jackson’s 55-meter dash time of 7.43 was 12th out of 13 runners.

She fared much better in the 4x400 relay, running a sensational split of 57-plus seconds to lift a squad that included Jill Hoops, Philicia Moredock and Kara Kuhrts to a time of 3:59.28, good for eighth out of nine teams.

MC’s final competitor, former outdoor All-American Scott Stanton, took ninth out of 11 competitors in the 55-meter hurdlers with a time of 7.79.

"Scott hit the first hurdle and he crushed the third one," said Haynes. "It’s a precision race, and he wasn’t at his best." Stanton missed advancing to the finals by .10 seconds.

The Fighting Scots track teams are currently training in Florida at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex. They will compete in a meet with approximately 15 other schools on Friday and Saturday.