PITTSBURG, Kan. - It’s time to clear out more room in the trophy case at Cedarville for standout distance runner Carsyn Koch.
 
The fleet-footed sophomore finished off her phenomenal indoor season perched atop the podium at the NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships following her blistering 800-meter run on Saturday.
 
In NCAA Championship record-breaking form, Koch delivered the first-ever national track and field individual title won by a Great Midwest Athletic Conference student-athlete with a time of 2:05.12 at Pittsburg State’s Robert W. Plaster Center.
 
Koch shattered the previous 13-year existing NCAA DII Indoor Championship 800-meter standard held by Grand Valley State’s Steph Kuhlman back in 2003 (2:05.75).
 
Already a national runner-up and NCAA All-American in the outdoor season as a freshman (also in the 800), Koch proved to be the nation’s best on Saturday evening, beating out a strong field of seven other NCAA qualifiers in the finals.
 
She beat runner-up Lynelle Decker of Seattle Pacific by over two seconds (2:07.52) after advancing through the prelims with the fourth-fastest time of 2:09.79.
 
To put her winning time of 2:05.12 in perspective, the fastest time in the country in the 800 this indoor season was an adjusted 2:07.21 by Minnesota-Duluth’s Emilee Trost.
 
Koch was a four-time G-MAC Athlete of the Week for the 2015-16 indoor campaign while flourishing in a number of events including the mile, 800 and various relay teams.
 
Between shattering conference and school records along with regional and national awards, Koch is already permanently etching her name in greatness just less than two years removed into her accomplished collegiate career.
 
Koch, from Washburn, Maine, was a number of Cedarville women’s track and field student-athletes competing at the NCAA Indoor Championships this weekend.
 
Junior Olivia Esbenshade ran a personal-best 2:10.95 in the 800-meter prelims after automatically qualifying. She finished 10th of the 16 runners (top eight advance to the finals).
 
Cedarville’s distance medley relay nationally-qualifying grouping of Esbenshade, Hailey Bredeson, Sarah Hoffman and Lyndsey Smith, finished 12th with a time of 12:02.78.
 
The G-MAC representative on the men’s side, Trevecca Nazarene junior runner Logan Rodgers, produced a 15th-place finish in the 5K with a time of 14:06.09.
 
With the indoor season officially in the books, teams around the G-MAC will now shift their focus to the outdoor season.