ABILENE - Nine members of Abilene Christian's nationally ranked track and field teams had their names included on the accepted entry lists released Tuesday by the NCAA for the DII Indoor Championships. The meet will take place during the weekend of March 9 - 10 in Mankato, Minn.
Senior
Nick Jones (shot put), and juniors Dennis Bain (60mH), Amanda Ouedraogo (triple jump), and Parker Petty (heptathlon) all registered automatic qualifying marks in their respective events during the course of the regular season, while the remaining six Wildcats were taken from a large pool of provisional qualifiers. This group includes long jumper Levance Williams, and the 4x400m relay of Karolyn Palmer, Shennae Steele, Ayesha Rumble and Karla Hope. ACU's relay was the last to make the 11-team field behind a season-best time of 3:50.41.
Hope - a senior and native of
Trinidad - also qualified for NCAA competition in the 400m dash after posting the nation's ninth-fastest time of 56.13 at last weekend's Lone Star Conference Invitational. She, along with Palmer - a true freshman - and junior transfers Rumble and Steele will be making their NCAA debuts.
Prior to joining the Wildcats, Rumble was the 2011 NJCAA 1000m champion and part of Iowa Central's national championship team in 2010. Steele was a two-time NJCAA qualifier while at Iowa Western.
Ouedraogo is a former Lone Star Conference champion and two-time NCAA runner-up in the triple jump. A native of
Hauts de Seine, France, Ouedraogo recorded a second-round distance of 41 feet - 10 inches (12.75m) at last year's indoor championships to earn the silver medal, and then registered a wind-aided leap of 41-8.75 (12.71) during the outdoor championships.
Ouedraogo enters this postseason as the No. 1 triple jumper in all of DII after posting a jump of 42-4.75 (12.92m) to win the championship heat of the New Balance Collegiate Invitational. The mark was an indoor personal best and two centimeter shy of tying her outdoor career mark of 12.94m.
Ouedraogo's closest challengers at nationals will be fellow automatic qualifiers Jennifer Zweifel of Truman State (41-00.50), Grand Canyon's Amber Yingling (40-08.75), New Mexico Highlands' Kearah Danville (40-4), and Northern Michigan's Sherice Hewett (40-2).
Jones - a three time NCAA champion in the discus - is in search of his first national shot put title (indoor or outdoor), but standing in his way are Daniel Vanek of Grand Valley State (62-07.75) and Findlay's Derrick Vicar's (62-6). Jones, however, is right behind them with a personal record mark of 62-5 (19.02m), which he attained at last weekend's USATF Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, N.M.
An Amarillo native, Jones ranked 24th on the 2012 U.S. performance list in the shot put entering the championships, but wound up finishing 10th overall, and just missed the eight-man finals by less than three inches.
As one of ACU's “fab four" at last year's indoor nationals, Jones and his teammates (Ramon Sparks, Desmond Jackson, Amos Sang) defeated runner-up Ashland's 22-member team 49-42 for the trophy. Jones contributed five points to the Wildcats' victory after placing fourth in the shot put at 59-10.5 (18.25).
Bain, a junior transfer from Rend Lake College, qualified for a spot in the 60m hurdles after clocking a first-place time of 7.93 seconds at the New Mexico Invitational in late January. He is currently seeded-sixth in the field and one of only eight student-athletes to record an automatic qualifying mark. Tyler Sipes of Grand Canyon is No. 1 with a time of 7.82 seconds.
Bain's previous big-meet experience includes the 2011 BAAA (Bahamas Association of Athletics Associations)
Championships, where he won a hurdles title in 14.48 and placed third in the 200m (21.87). He also placed sixth in the NJCAA 110m hurdles in both 2010 and 2011 with times of 14.59 and 14.04.
Petty punched his ticket for nationals after recording several personal bests at the Lone Star Conference Indoor Invitational. The White Deer, Texas, native and 2011 conference decathlon champion, scored 5,174 points in the heptathlon, which ranks third this season behind Central Missouri's Brent Vogel (5,315) and Darius Walker (5,298).
Petty reached his score thanks to a six-second improvement of 2:44.89 in the 1000-meter run, and career bests recorded in the 55 hurdles (6.86), high jump (5-10.75, 1.92m), long jump (21-3.25, 6.48m), shot put (39-11.25, 12.17m), and pole vault (15-5, 4.70m). By winning five of the seven events, Petty broke his personal best in the heptathlon by 300 points.
Williams, a senior, is the third-ranking long jumper this season after recording an indoor personal best at Texas Tech of 24-06.50 (7.48m). A member of a conference champion 4x100m relay in 2011, Williams finished seventh outdoors last year in the long jump (23-11.75w) and placed second with his relay in 40.18 seconds.
Williams' top mark in the long jump (indoor or outdoor) remains 24-9, which he recorded at last spring's ACU Twilight Invitational.
Log onto
USTFCCCA.org for more information on this year's championship plus a full list of rankings and assorted resources.
