It was officially announced late last night that the University of Redlands qualified seven women and five men to the 2019 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships, which will take place on Thursday, May 23, through Saturday, May 25, at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
The top 20 men and the top 22 women declared for each individual event are selected for the national meet. The relays include the top 16 men's teams and the top 16 women's teams.
For Redlands, junior Jessica Fields (Las Vegas, NV) looks forward to competing in the 100 Hurdles and the 400 Hurdles in the third national meet of her career. She currently ranks second in the shorter race with a qualifying time of 13.97, which she recently unleashed at the Redlands Final Qualifier. After recording a time of 1:01.05 to win the 400 Hurdles at the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Championships, she qualifies as the fourth-fastest competitor.
While also reaching the national meet for the third time, junior Chyenne Kimble (Big Bear Lake, CA) joins Fields in the 100 Hurdles as the fifth-seeded competitor with a time of 14.19. She also heads to Ohio for the 200 Meters with a school-record time of 24.57, which places her seventh in the nation. Finally, Kimble combines forces with sophomore Hannah Albrecht (Cottage Grove, OR) and first-years Annick Bangou (Redlands, CA) and Courtney O'Neal (Atlanta, GA) as a formidable 4x100 Relay that ran a blistering 46.74 at the Redlands Invitational to rank second in the nation.
Graduate student Reyna Ta'amu (Lakewood, CA) returns to the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the third year in a row. She enters the Shot Put as the top qualifier in the country with a mark of 48' ¾", which came at the Redlands Invitational earlier this season.
Finally, senior Kara Romani (Sacramento, CA) makes her second national appearance, this time in the Heptathlon. She fired off a career-best total of 4,595 points at the recent Redlands Final Qualifier to enter the NCAA Championships as the 12th seed.
For the men, senior Luke Bohlinger (Mercer Island, WA) heads back to nationals for the third time in his career. He sits 18th in the nation with a qualifying time of 10.62 in the 100 Meters and ran the 12th-best, 200 time in NCAA Division III at 21.38. Both of his top marks came at the SCIAC Championships, where he defended his title in each event. Junior Maliq Champion (Beaumont, CA) joins him in the 200 with the No. 3 qualifying time of 21.10, which he ran at the second conference meet of the season. Bohlinger and Champion share their speedy talents with the Bulldogs' 4x100 Relay that also includes sophomores Domanick Murray (Palm Springs, CA) and Cooper Malerstein (Huntington Beach, CA). The quartet enters the national meet with the eighth-fastest time of 41.00, which recently came at the Redlands Final Qualifier.
Sophomore Tucker Cargile (Denver, CO) returns to the national scene after making his rookie debut in the 800 Meters. He uncorked the fastest time in the country at 1:50.27 during the recent Oxy Invite.
For the third year in a row, the Bulldogs send 10 or more student-athletes to the NCAA Outdoor Championships. This ranks as the second-most in Head Coach Mike Schmidt's tenure at Redlands.
A complete list of the competing student-athletes is available at the NCAA's timing website. Results will also be posted here.
The first event for Redlands' qualifiers is the Heptathlon, which begins with the 100 Hurdles at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 23.