Hayden Hackman picked up the shot, walked over to the circle and threw his first attempt.

“I didn’t like it,” Hackman said. It didn’t feel quite right, but when the measurement was recorded, it was the farthest throw of his career by 18 inches.

That’s when he knew that he was about to do something special.

On this third attempt, the Glasgow native threw the shot more than two feet farther than he ever had before.

It was over two and a half feet farther than his closest heptathlon competitor. He also had career bests in the long jump, high jump, and pole vault.

He finished the heptathlon with a school-record 4776 points and became an NAIA All-American with a sixth-place finish.

“It was awesome,” Hackman said. “It’s hard to explain. Nothing ever went wrong,  I was just constantly going up.”

Hackman entered the event seeded 14th overall.

“I knew I wasn’t seeded in the top eight, so I was just trying to go compete and see if I could make something happen,” he explained.

In his weakest event, the 60-meter hurdles, Hackman finished second to last, but still turned in the second-best time of his career to earn 581 critical points.

“That was the point that I realized what was happening,” he said.

Hackman finished tied for fourth in the high jump with a PR of 6-0.75.

He tied for sixth in the pole vault with a height of 13-5.25 and his long jump of 20-2.25 was also a personal best, good for 12th.

Hackman said that persistance in training put him in the position to have a big day at the NAIA national meet.

“For me, its just being consistent,” he said.

“When you have to train in this many events, as long as I do, you’re going to have a lot of bad days, days where you don’t feel good.

“You just have to work through it and know that its going to pan out like it did.”

The CMU men’s 4x400 meter relay team finished 12th with a season-best time of 3:18.86.

Members of the record-holding

relay are Mohammed Nyaoga, Curtis Johns, Mutiu Shittu, and Nehemiah Colyer.

Freshman Jesse Pinkley was 14th in the pole vault with a height of 14-11. Taylor Bottomley finished 18th in the shot put with a throw of 49-11. Bottomley also finished 20th in the weight throw.   

Pearl Morgan ran a time of 58.56 in the 400-meter dash on the 300-meter flat track at South Dakota State. She finished 20th.

Jasmine Evers was 27th in the weight throw with a distance of 46-4.75.

The track and field teams will open the outdoor season on March 21st at the CMU Open.