BOISE ID, Five athletes hit National provisional qualifying marks this weekend at the Idaho-Utah border clash hosted by Boise State. Jasmyn Jewett (Fr. Mt. Home Id) , Maurus Hope (So. Adrian Or), Michelle Phillips (Sr. Meridian, Id), Jaclyn Puga (Jr. Meridian, Id) and Barak Watson (Fr. Nampa, Id) all posted marks that provisionally qualified them for the NCAA DII Outdoor National Championships in Charlotte, NC.
12:40 pm, Jaclyn Puga and Barak Watson stated off the day with marks in the 3,000m Steeplechase. Jaclyn ran 10:54.0 shaving 14 secondfs off her season best, which places her only 8 seconds off the auto qualifying mark of 10:46.0. She currently sits 20th on a deep national list and may possibly need to run the auto qualifier or close to it to make the meet. Barak Watson followed in suit in the men's steeple running 9:18.0 also placing him 20th on the national list.
2:00pm, freshman Jasmyn Jewett put together a pair of National provisional jumps that ended up placing her 2nd place overall, behind defending NCAA Division I National Champion Eleni Kafourou, and 23rd on the National list. Jasmyn jumped 11.67m (38'-3.5”), 12cm over the provisional mark and has an excellent opportunity to jump further at a very competitive GNAC conference championships which will boast 5 athletes, including teammate Laura VonArx, who have hit the National provisional mark in that event.
2:15pm, Michelle Phillips rips off a great 800m race in which she placed 4th, only 2 seconds off the lead. Her time of 2:12.68 is almost 3 seconds faster that her season best, and is a full 2 seconds under the National provisional sitting her in 17th place in a very tough national event.
2:45pm, Maurus Hope just continues to learn how to run the 400 Hurdles. Marus bettered his NPQ time to 53.20 and is 16th on the National list. Marus will get another shot to better his time at the GNAC Championships. Last year Teammate Dallas Beatty ran 53.50 to sneak in with the 16th spot, and raced to 3rd place with a 52.05, Maurus may hold on to the 16th spot with a faster time than it took last year, but look for more good things from Maurus as he continues to refine this new event.
Other notable performances from the border clash were;
Justin Webb (Fr. Weiser, Id) who ran 1:56.49 in the men's 800m which places him 14th on the GNAC conference list and put him in position to make the conference meet in 2 weeks.
Erika McCarthy (So. Baker City, Or) improved her conference Hammer throw to 48.30m (158-5) to improve her 2nd place GNAC standings and continues to close the gap on the 49.50m National provisional mark.
Christabel Leonce (Fr. Castries St. Lucia, West Indies) jumped from 15th to 5th on the GNAC conference list with her performance in the 200m where she ran 25.68, her teammate LaToya Tidwell (Jr. Tacoma, Wa) did the same jumping from 13th to 6thplace on the 200m list with her performance of 26.70.
Both of the 4x100m relays ran to season best marks, the women (Leonce, Grammer, Tidwell and Reid) ran 49.19 and the men (Sepe, Colby, Hill and Hope) ran 42.44, just .22 off the school record mark of 42.22 set back in 1980.
The Idaho women defeated the Utah women 333 to 308 and the Utah men defeated the Idaho men 363 to 200.
The GNAC Championships begin Monday in Nampa, as Northwest Nazarene hosts the Conference Multi-event on Monday and Tuesday, May 3rd and 4th. It will be the largest GNAC Multi-event championships to date with a field of 16 men and 15 women competing. NNU has qualified 4 women; Beth McClam, (Sr. Fairfield Id) Laura VonArx (Jr. Hermiston, Or) Jill Bennett (So, Grants Pass, Or) and Lindsay Brady (Sr. Boise, Id) and 3 men; Stuart Montgomery (Jr. Marysville, Wa), Ben Heidegger (So. Medford, Or.) and Eric Zwiefelhofer (Sr. Hermiston, Or) who will be competing.
The Crusaders have Graduation next weekend and will not be competing over the weekend. Conference qualifying marks will be set by the end of the weekend and the final conference list will set early in the week. The team will travel to Monmouth, Oregon for the GNAC Championships on Thursday May 13th, with competition on Friday and Saturday.
