LAFAYETTE (Press Release) – After combining for three individual titles for the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns track and field team at last week’s Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships, Louisiana’s Hannes Burger and Reagann Leleux each earned Sun Belt Conference Indoor Track and Field Freshman of the Year honors, in a vote by the league’s head coaches and released on Thursday.
The duo helped Louisiana to its best performance in recent years, with the men’s team finishing fourth overall in the nine-team field with 82 points. The Ragin’ Cajuns women’s team, bolstered by individual titles from Leleux and Shalei Matthews, secured its best finish since 2015 finishing eighth overall with 50 points in the 12-team field.
Burger, the third Ragin’ Cajuns member to earn SBC Male Freshman of the Year honors joining Justin Arceneaux (2007) and Sander Maes (2012), claimed both the 3,000-meters (8:24.25) and 5,000-meters (14:42.68) at the SBC Championships. Burger, who added a sixth-place finish in the Mile Run, finished as the Sun Belt’s Male Top Scorer in the two-day event with 23 points.
Leleux, the 2019 women’s indoor champion in the pole vault, cleared 12-6 ¼ in her inaugural conference meet and became the Ragin’ Cajuns first SBC Indoor champion since Kaitlyn Moreau (pentathlon) and Kelci Lyons (800 meters) in 2015. The New Iberia native and became the first female Ragin’ Cajuns member to earn Freshman of the Year notice.
Leleux and Burger joined Louisiana teammates and SBC champions Dominique Williams (men’s weight throw) and Matthews (women’s triple jump) as first-team All-Sun Belt Conference performers.
Five other members – Kyle Baudoin (men’s pole vault), John Joseph (men’s triple jump), Graham Sokol (men’s weight throw), Kimmie Rushford (women’s pole vault) and Juliette Smith (women’s pentathlon) all received third-team All-Sun Belt honors for Louisiana after earning third-place finishes in their respective events.
Louisiana will officially open its outdoor season on Saturday, March 9, when it travels to Lake Charles for the McNeese Cowboy Relays.
