Eight E8 Women Heading to NCAA Indoor Championships
The NCAA Division III Men's and Women’s Track and Field Committee announced Monday the participants in the 2015 NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships.
For each woman’s individual event contested, including the pentathlon, the top 17 declared student-athletes were accepted into the competition. For each relay event contested, the top 12 declared relay teams, one per institution, were accepted into the competition.
The championships will be held March 13-14 at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with Roanoke College serving as the official host.
The Empire 8 Athletic Conference will be represented by four Ithaca College student-athletes (Natalie Meyer, Alex Rechen, Emilia Scheemaker and Brandy Smith), two student-athletes from Stevens Institute of Technology (Amy Regan and Gladys Njoku) and one student-athlete from Nazareth College (Taylor Pierson) and Utica College (Sarah Wiatr).
Meyer earned the highest seeding among the four Ithaca selections. Meyer qualified for the high jump with the sixth-best mark in the country at 1.70 meters (5 feet, 7 inches) which she set at Cornell's Greg Page Relays on Dec. 6. Meyer finished 14th at the national meet last season in the high jump.
Rechen set a school record in the pole vault this season with a mark of 3.72 meters (12' 2.5"). That performance by Rechen took place on Feb. 20 at Ithaca's Bomber Quad and placed her eighth overall in Division III.
Scheemaker measured out 11.73 meters (38'6") in the triple jump on Feb. 20 to post the 11th-best mark in the country. Only .25 meters separates Scheemaker's mark from the nation's top performance. She earned All-American recognition last year in the triple jump with a distance of 11.74 meters.
Smith found a spot in this year's championships with a mark of 16.89 meters (55' 5") in the weight throw. Smith established that distance last weekend, March 6, at the ECAC Championships. She is seeded 14th overall.
Regan is the lone E8 athlete to qualify for two events. The Green Brook native is currently ranked No. 1 nationally in this event, and her time of 16:40.84 is the fifth best time ever ran in DIII history. She set an E8 record in both the mile and 5,000m at the conference championship meet in February. Regan also is ranked third nationally in the 3,000-meter after posting her the second fastest time of her career (9:46.16) on Feb. 22 at the Princeton Invitational.
Njoku will join Meyer in the high jump event. Njoku owns the top seed with a height of 1.80 meters that she posted on Feb. 7 at the Ramapo College Indoor Select. This height leads the nation by seven centimeters and she is undefeated against DIII athletes in the high jump in 2015. She has won five of her last seven high jump competitions.
Wiatr is currently ranked fifth in the country in the triple jump with a season-best leap of 11.85 meters which she recorded back on Feb. 7. Last indoor season, she became the college's first ever national qualifier in the triple jump and went on to place 13
th at National's with a distance of 11.18 meters. She is coming off an impressive victory at ECAC's this past Saturday with a jump of 11.68 meters.
Pierson is making her third straight trip to the Indoor Championship meet after earning All-American honors last season with a fifth-place finish in the women's long jump. She is ranked 16th in a 17-person field with a jump of 18 feet, 3 inches that she attained at the Brockport Mid-Season Classic. Pierson also placed 10th at the national meet two years ago. Her personal best jump is 18 feet, 9 3/4 inches, set last year at RIT.
NCAA Release |
Women's Accepted Entries |
JDL Fast Track Site