DES MOINES — Deonté Dean made his return to the blue oval, kicking off his Drake experience on Friday afternoon by anchoring Northern Iowa’s 4×100-meter relay. Dean, a 2021 Marshalltown High School graduate, has competed the past three seasons as a Panther in mainly relays and the 200.
With relatively smooth handoffs, Dean brought UNI to a second-place finish in the first heat with a time of 40.98 seconds. After the second heat and a few disqualifications, the Panthers were left in fourth place headed into Saturday’s finals.
The team of Hunter Manock, Drew Bartels, Luke Meyers and Dean lined up for the final and, with some struggle, finished in fourth place before being disqualified for an exchange zone violation.
Another Marshalltown grad joined Dean at the Relays. Gatleel Joar, a 2024 Bobcat alum, had a busy weekend of track competing at both the Kip Janvrin Open, hosted by Simpson College in Indianola, on Friday before the Drake Relays on Saturday.
The Iowa Central Community College freshman ran both the 110- and 400 hurdles on Saturday, finishing 20th and 26th, respectively. On Saturday, Joar found himself on Iowa Central’s shuttle hurdle relay squad. Being the second leg of the relay, Joar helped the Tritions to a 12th-place finish in 1:02.29, capping off his busy week of hurdling.