Northern State’s Jackson Willis won the long jump and is currently second overall after the first day of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference decathlon and heptathlon competition at the Brownell Activities Complex on Thursday.

Willis scored 3,212 points, trailing only Calder Erick of Concordia-St. Paul who has 3,366.

“Jackson is positioned well. He’s sitting in second,” said Northern State coach Lynne Dingman. “He had a really nice long jump today, so pretty excited across the board. He just did well in all of his events.”

Willis won the long jump with a leap of 22-feet 1-inch.

Northern’s other competitor in the decathlon is Sean Juengst who scored 2,924 points on the first day. He is currently in ninth place.

“Sean Juengst just had a lot of improvement from our last multi,” Dingman said. “He put together a good day and he’ll have a strong day (Friday), too, so he’s definitely in contention.”

Juengst finished third in both the shot put and high jump. Willis was fourth in the high jump.

The decathlon and heptathlon finish up this morning before the regular NSIC meet gets under way after that.

Dingman said she believes both Willis and Juengst will be able to score many more points when action resumes today.

She said the guys continue to show improvement and build upon their initial competition.

“Usually when we do one early in the season you kind of calculate, I think you can score 400 or 500 more points the next time you do one,” Dingman said. “Both of these kids are freshmen so there’s a lot of learning to do and there’s a lot of potential there. (They’re both showing) a lot of growth from the last time we did one. As they get older they’re going to just keep building and building on it.”

To see complete first day results, click on the following link:

https://live.herostiming.com/meets/12340