With the NCAA Division II Indoor National Championship meet a mere two-and-a-half weeks away, the ACU Track and Field team split up into four groups Friday in an attempt to try and get as many athletes either provisionally or automatically qualified or to improve their already qualified times for better national standing for the impending national meet.
And several athletes did just that on Friday.
Desmond Jackson stole the show for the ACU squad as he set the NCAA Automatic Qualifying Mark in both of the events he ran: the 200-meter dash and the 60-meter dash.
Jackson finished first in the 60-meter dash, running a 6.73, eclipsing the national automatic qualifying time of 6.75. Paris Robertson ran it in 6.97. Jackson also ranked first in the 200-meter dash, posting a mark of 21.26, 0.03 seconds better than the national qualifying time of 21.23. Jackson already had qualified for nationals in the 60-meter dash, but that was his first time to run the 200, and the results speak for themselves.
“I was very pleased about our meet,” Jackson said. “I knew it would be really important to post good times going into nationals in three weeks for better positioning. That was my first time to run the 200, and I was very happy with my time. I had a slight hamstring injury that I had been nursing, so I wasn’t really sure how it was going to affect me. I guess it turned out okay.”
Long distance runner Anais Belledant finished in fourth place in the women’s 1-mile run, but more importantly, improved upon her personal best of 5:00.84 that she ran in New York two weeks ago. With her time, she provisionally qualified for nationals.
In the men’s triple jump, Timothy Jones finished second, posting a jump of 14.01, a slim .39 meters behind the provisional mark of 14.4. On the women’s side of the event, Amanda Ouedraogo hit the provisional qualifying mark, jumping 11.99 meters.
Karla Hope provisionally qualified for nationals in the 400-meter race, posing a solid time of 56.76, good for fourth at the Nebraska meet.
Sydney Smith ran a 25.74 in the 200-meter dash, narrowly missing the provisional mark by .04 seconds.
The decathletes were at a last chance meet in Lubbock, but no one qualified there. At the meet, there were only six people competing. None of the ACU decathletes had gotten to post times yet because of the weather that caused their meet to be canceled two weeks ago.
“It was a rough meet for all of us,” decathlete Caleb Gregory said. “We hadn’t had a chance to get qualifying times yet, so this was our only chance to do so, which was a bummer that we had to wait so long.”
Several ACU athletes already had qualified for Nationals prior to this weekend, so they chose not to compete this weekend.
Amos Sang set an automatic qualifying time of 14:05.82 in the 5,000-meter run in New York two weeks ago. Triple jumper Ramon Sparks chose to play it safe as well. He already had qualified for Nationals in the men’s long and triple jump, and Tyler Fleet hit a provisional qualifying mark of 57-11.75 in the weight throw at the Texas Tech Invitational two weeks ago.
The team now will prepare for the final meet of the indoor season, the NCAA Division II Indoor National Championships, March 10-12 in Albuquerque, N.M.
