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Junior Jacob Smith won both the 3,000-meter and 5,000-meter and sophomore Tristan Faure placed second with a school record in the heptathlon to lead the High Point University men's track & field team to a fourth-place finish at the Big South Championship on Friday and Saturday in Blacksburg, Va.

"It was a solid meet for our men's team," said HPU head coach Mike Esposito. "Jacob getting the two wins was huge. He's really becoming an elite runner. We had several other good performances including Tristan in the heptathlon, Patrick Crawford having one of his best meets on the track, Evan Emery in the dash and Justin Doehr running under 49 seconds in the 400 as a freshman."

Going into the final event, the 4x400 relay, High Point was just a half point behind VMI and needed to beat the Keydets to move up to fourth place in the meet. The team of Faure, freshman Chris Muggler, senior Sebastien Bonnot and Doehr placed fourth in a time of 3:20.41 with VMI finishing seventh. It was just off the school record of 3:19.81.

Liberty won the meet with 168 points followed by a tie for second between Radford and Charleston Southern, both at 98 points. High Point scored 73.5 points to surpass VMI (71). Winthrop finished sixth with 53 points followed by Gardner-Webb (51), Campbell (36) and UNC Asheville (13.5).

Smith's win in the 5,000-meter put the Panthers in position to make the final push. He kicked past Winthrop's Adam Freudenthal on the last lap for the win in a career-best time of 14:30.32, beating Freudenthal by two seconds. Behind Smith, Crawford placed fifth in the 5K in a career-best 14:47.15 to score four points for the Panthers.

On Friday, Smith won the 3,000-meter in a career-best 8:20.71 and Crawford placed fifth in a career-best 8:31.26. Smith also ran the 800-meter leg of HPU's third-place distance medley relay along with freshman Reece Ayers (1,200), Bonnot (400) and freshman Jeff LaCoste (1,600). The team finished in 10:12.30.

Faure scored a career-best 4,956 points in the heptathlon to beat his school record of 4,638 from the Liberty Kickoff in December. He posted career bests in five of the heptathlon's seven events: the 60-meter dash (7.21), long jump (6.96 meters, 22-10), 60-meter hurdles (8.68), pole vault (3.60 meters, 11-9.75) and 1,000-meter (2:43.50). Faure overcame a minor injury during the long jump on Friday to complete five more events before running the 4x400 relay to finish the meet.

The Panthers had four scorers in the sprints. Sophomore Evan Emery placed fourth in the 60-meter dash in a time of 6.85. In the 60-meter hurdles, sophomore Ryan Venable placed fifth in a career-best of 8.33 and senior Alex Fisher took sixth in a season-best 8.39. Venable's career best before the meet was 8.49. Doehr placed fifth in the 400 in a career-best 48.94.

Junior Dakota Peachee led HPU in the middle distance events with a third-place finish in the mile in 4:20.35. He came from behind to out-lean Gardner-Webb's Michael McClay, who finished in 4:20.38.

Muggler placed fifth in a tactical 800-meter final with a time of 1:59.50. He ran 1:55.65 in the preliminaries. The Panthers' final scorer was redshirt-freshman Max Coleman, who tied for eighth in the high jump, clearing 1.80 meters (5-10.75).

The championship closes out the indoor season for High Point University. The Panthers begin the outdoor season at the Wake Forest Open March 16-17 in Winston-Salem, N.C., before hosting the VertKlasse Meeting on March 24 at Vert Stadium.