Chadron State College track and field athletes expect to contend for another NCAA team trophy this week as they arrive in Florida and prepare to compete in the 2017 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at IMG Academy in Bradenton, taking place Thursday through Saturday.
The Eagle women enter the meet with the highest ranking ever bestowed on any CSC track and field program, indoors or outdoors. The USTFCCCA computer rankings projected a fourth-place finish for the women’s delegation when the numbers were crunched for all accepted NCAA entries on Monday.
That assessment is one spot better than the fifth-place ranking which the CSC ladies received prior to the indoor national meet, when they sent only three athletes and brought back the third-place trophy.
The program’s highest previous finish at outdoor nationals was their 14th-place showing at last year’s event, where Shelby Bozner‘s national heptathlon title and Stachia Reuwsaat‘s silver medal in the long jump produced 18 points, and Bozner added one more in the 400 meter hurdles.
Ranked ahead of CSC are Pittsburg State, West Texas A&M, and Adams State, in descending order. The Eagles passed Angelo State for fourth after the NCAA accepted lists were announced.
This year, six Eagle women will compete in a total of seven different events, setting the table for another run at a team trophy.
Senior thrower Mel Herl and fellow senior Reuwsaat lead the way with three entries apiece.
Herl will compete as a top contender in all three of her throws. On Thursday she has the hammer throw, followed by the discus on Friday and the shot put on Saturday. She is a top 10 all-time performer in all three events and enters the meet seeded first, second, and first again, respectively, in the three throws. Only Angelo State’s freshman Daisy Osakue, who leads in discus, has thrown an implement further this season.
Reuwsaat’s quest to become the Eagles’ first three-time national champ begins with the long jump on Thursday, where she is the top seed after jumping the third-longest all-time distance of 6.61 meters, or 21 feet, 8.25 inches, at the adidas/Steve Scott Invite in California last month. Her record leap is the only top mark, among the 10 best jumpers in Division II, which was wind-legal, achieved with a breeze less than 2.0 meters per second. Two jumpers from West Texas A&M, Rellie Kaputin and Fatim Affesi, are her nearest competition, with season-bests of 6.41 meters and 6.38 meters, respectively.
The Eagles’ top jumper will also enter the 100 meter dash as the 14th seed, with an official time of 11.69 seconds. Reuwsaat’s actual best in the dash is 11.62, which would tie for eighth, except that high altitude is recognized as an advantage in the sprints, and times are adjusted accordingly. However she, along with the other two competitors who qualified for the event at the RMAC Championships, ran a qualifying time without the advantage of a tailwind.
The Chadron State 4×100 meter relay team of Tessa Gorsuch, Sierra Martinez, Chasidy Horton, and Reuwsaat, in that order, ran under the old school record of 46.52 seconds by more than a full second, at the RMAC Championships two weeks ago. Their new record of 45.46 ranks sixth in the nation, regardless of altitude. They will be expected to add points to the team’s ledger as well when they run on Thursday to attempt to make the top eight and qualify for finals on Saturday. The relay contingent from Adams State University, which was the only one faster at the conference meet, leads the nation in the event.
Alisha Heelan will serve as the alternate for the relay team, and will only compete in the event one of the four qualifiers is unable to go.
The women’s sixth qualifier is Ashlyn Hanson, who will compete alongside Herl in the hammer. The junior is ranked 15th after registering her own personal best of 57.26 meters (187-10) at the RMAC Championships to grab second place. The hammer throw figures to be one of the most hotly contested events, with 22 entries and nine automatic qualifiers among them.
Gorsuch will enter the women’s 100 meter hurdles as well as the relay. She is seeded 18th with a personal best of 13.78 seconds from the Colorado Mines Last Chance Meet. Pittsburg State’s Courtney Nelson has the nation’s top time in the hurdles, with 13.35 seconds leading the field.
The Eagles are one of only two women’s teams to boast the top-seeded athletes in three events, along with top-ranked Pittsburg State. The Gorillas own the nation’s top marks in the 100 meter hurdles, high jump, and heptathlon. PSU was also ranked No. 1 entering the indoor NCAA meet earlier in the year, but fell a shade more than two points behind CSC in the final score.
Alejandro Garcia is the only Eagle distance runner in the men’s program history to have placed twice at the same conference meet, taking third in the 5,000 meter run and fifth at 1,500 meters two weeks ago. He also becomes the second male to qualify for NCAAs in the distance races, after cutting his 1,500 meter time to 3:52.50 on the last day of qualifying. While he misses the school record of Joe Schulz by about a second and a half, he will enter the national meet with a seed time of 3:46.26. Unlike the sprints, the thinner air creates a disadvantage in the longer races, and therefore qualifying times are adjusted down, rather than up.
Finally, Cory Martens will make his first appearance a national meet in the discus throw. His top throw of 54.19 meters (177-9) is eleventh entering the national competition, and won him the conference title two weeks ago. He also set a new school record with that mark. Martens’s other school record, a mark of 59.18 meters in the hammer throw, was just inches shy of qualifying him for that event as well.
The eight national qualifiers matches the teams’ combined entries in 2016 and is second only to the 11 who were sent in 2011. No CSC women’s team has ever produced more than the six national qualifiers who will compete this year.