Ben Barton leads decathlon at NCAA track and field championships

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After a sensational performance by decathlete Ben Barton the previous two days, the BYU men’s team seemed well positioned heading into Friday’s final day of competition at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Ore. Carter Cutting, the NCAA indoor champ, and Trayvon Kitchen, the team’s tremendous freshman talent, scored just one point between them, and the Cougars finished 21st in the team competition with 12 points — 10 of them via Barton’s win in the decathlon on Thursday night. Cutting was running near the front of the pack late in the 1,500-meter run, but with 200 meters to go, Oregon’s Simeon Birnbaum, the collegiate record holder, made a sudden move that seemed to catch his rivals off guard.

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BYU’s Ben Barton, a 6-foot-5 senior from Michigan, won the decathlon at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships Thursday night and did so in dramatic fashion, with the competition being settled in the 10th and final event of the two-day competition. A short time later, Jane Hedengren, the sensational freshman from Provo, stepped onto the track as a big favorite to win the 10,000-meter run, but it wasn’t to be. Back to Barton, after nine events in the decathlon, he found himself trailing Louisville’s Kenneth Byrd by 50 points, with Louisville’s Luuke Pelkmans just 201 points behind him.

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Ben Barton, a senior All-American at BYU, was in first place in the decathlon after the first day of competition at Wednesday’s NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.