May 23, 2008
Walnut, CA – Heavy rains may have thrown off the schedule on day one of the 2008 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field National Championships, but the University of Mary women’s team only saw the rainbows. After a three-hour rain delay, both the Marauders 4x100 relay team and Cassie Blazer in the 400 meter hurdles secured spots in the finals on Saturday.
The U-Mary 4x100 meter relay team of Kacie Sweep, Kristin Stewart, Mishay Weber and Blazer sprinted to a 46.95 clocking, tying the quartet’s best time of the season. They grabbed the ninth and final spot in the finals set for Saturday, May 24, at 8:27 p.m. pacific time.
Blazer posted the sixth-best 400 meter hurdle qualifying mark in the preliminaries, recording a time of 1:01.28. For the sophomore from Mandan, ND, it was her best time of the year by .08. Blazer will now compete in the finals on Saturday at 7:15 p.m. She already had guaranteed herself a spot competing on the final day of the championships as part of the 4x100 relay team.
On the men’s side, Jesse Piper ran the 400 meter hurdles but will not advance to the finals. His time of 54.14 placed him 14th out of 17 competitors. Piper will compete today in the 110 meter hurdles. The Northern Sun champion in the event, Piper will run in the preliminaries at 7:10 p.m. pacific time.
Including Piper, the Marauders compete in four events today. Josh Obrigewitch gets the day started when the men’s shot put finals begin at 3 p.m. (all times pacific). Destinee Keller competes in the women’s triple jump finals at 6:15. Sweep will run in the women’s 200 meter dash preliminaries at 5:40 p.m. with the finals set for 7:33 p.m. on Saturday. Piper runs his second event, the 110 meter hurdles, at 7:10 p.m. with the final round scheduled for Saturday at 6:17 p.m.
To follow the results of the events online, host school Cal Poly Pomona has a web page set up at:
http://www.dsa.csupomona.edu/athletics/trackandfieldchampionships/default.asp
