Sweet Home alumnus Dakotah Keys didn’t run the fastest 1500 meters of his life Thursday night, June 12, in the NCAA Division I National Championships decathlon, but it was one of his best.
Keys, a junior competing for Oregon, finished four seconds shy of his personal best with a 4:28.29 in the final event of the two-day, 10-event competition, to score a personal best 8068 points and finish third.
That was far superior to his 11th-place finish last year and he was happy about that.
Maicel Uibo of Georgia won the decathlon championship with 8182 points after finishing third in the 1500, behind Keys. Johannes Hock of Texas, last year’s champion, finished as runner-up with 8092. Oregon freshman Mitch Modin of Bend finished 13th after ending the first day in eighth place, one behind Keys.
Keys got off to a slow start in the first event on Wednesday, the 100, running 11.12, well short of his best of 10.94, run at the PAC-12 championships in May, and a similarly close long jump (7.31 meters) before hitting his first of three PR’s over the two-day span with a shot put of 45-01. After a high jump of 6-7, which was 4 inches short of his best of 6-11, set in March of this year, he scored another PR in the 400, running 50 flat.
Keys opened Thursday’s competition with a 14.78 in the 110 hurdles, a discus throw of 124-5 and pole vaulting 16-0, he won the javelin competition with a 4-foot PR of 223-8 to move himself from seventh to fifth place with one event to go.
That was the 1500, which Keys led early before Texas freshman Wolf Mahler took the lead in the final lap and beat him by a second and a half, with Uibo a step behind.
The third-place finish did two things for Keys. It made him the top U.S. native collegiate decathlete in the nation – Uibo is from Estonia and Hock is German – and it left Keys hungry for more. Four of the six top finishers were foreign imports.
Comments are closed.