Five Aggies provisionally qualify for NCAA Indoor Championships
Seniors Shae Bair, Kristi Connors, Brett Guymon and Maurice Jenkins and freshman Justin Wickard of the Utah State University indoor track team have provisionally qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., March 8 and 9.
All five athletes will compete in Last Chance meets Saturday to try and improve their marks and increase their chances of qualifying for the national competition by moving up the list of national provisional qualifiers.
Bair and Jenkins will compete in the pole vault at Idaho State University. Connors and Guymon will race in the 400-meter dash with Wickard competing in the long jump at the University of Washington.
“They are around the top 20 in the nation,” Head Coach Gregg Gensel said. “They probably need to be in the top 18 to go to nationals.”
All five athletes improved their season marks last weekend at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Indoor Championships Friday and Saturday in Flagstaff, Ariz., Gensel said.
Connors, who is a team captain, finished second in the 400 with a time of 54.03 seconds at the meet, while Guymon, also a captain, earned fourth (47.08) in the same event on the men’s side. Jenkins took third in the pole vault (17’1.75″), and Wickard finished seventh in the long jump with a mark of 23’9″ at the conference meet.
Team captain Bair finished sixth at the meet and set a school record in the pole vault Friday with a vault of 12’9.5″.
“They are going to have to improve their scores to qualify,” Gensel said. “If they compete like they did last weekend, they should be able to do it.”
Jenkins, who is also a captain on the team, is the only athlete of the five who has competed in nationals in the past. He took 11th in the pole vault last indoor season with a mark of 16’10”.
All five athletes have a good chance of competing at the national level, Gensel said, depending on how they perform this weekend.