Thursday & Friday Results
ALLENDALE, Mich. – A total of 10 different student-athletes from the Great Midwest Athletic Conference presumably either cemented their status as All-American in the finals or through advancement of the preliminaries on the second day of the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships on the campus of Grand Valley State University.
First Team All-American status is usually defined by the United States Track & Field Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) as top 8 individual or relay finish or Second Team All-American is through a 9th-12th place finish.
An exciting Day 1 on Thursday included a pair of national championship titles won by Findlay’s Austin Combs (hammer throw) and Tiffin’s Cameron Burrows (long jump) while others took their place at the podium as a top-8 place winner.
In addition to national champion, the senior Burrows added All-American status to his name in the high jump with a fourth-place finish on Friday. He cleared 2.11m (6’11”) while the pack, three different competitors, all skied over 2.17m to tie for the top height.
Matching Burrows from the conference for the top finish on the day was Malone senior Noah Schaub, who made his mark on a chilly day in the 3K steeplechase. Schaub was fourth by just .008 of a second in a very, very close photo finish with Jake Mitchem of Colorado Mines.
Schaub continues an impressive trend of a 3K steeplechase All-American from the conference to be recognized for the fifth consecutive year (Daniel Michalski, 2016-2017; Trent Classen, 2018; Jacob Kernell, 2019).
In the women’s 3K steeplechase, conference outdoor champion Alexa Leppelmeier of Walsh capped a tremendous postseason by taking fifth. Leppelmeier was one of three NCAA qualifiers from the league to compete in the evening race, including Hillsdale’s Meg Scheske and Cedarville’s Rachel Sweeney in the field.
Leppelmeier steered towards the front of the talented pack as she toured the course with a time of 10:28.39. Again, the Great Midwest has bookend All-Americans from the 2019 meet when Hillsdale’s Allysen Eads finished eighth. It was her first outdoor national championships appearance.
Scheske would finish top 10 and Sweeney posted a 13th-place finish while also being named the Great Midwest’s first-ever recipient of the prestigious Elite 90 Award earlier in the afternoon.
Combs completed competition in the discus throw today after breaking the DII Championship meet record and posting the fourth-best effort in the hammer throw in Division II history yesterday. He finished 12th.
Tiffin’s Mason Plant and the Hillsdale 4x400-meter relay foursome both advanced out of the preliminaries and into the finals. Plant clocked a time of 14.24 in the 110-meter hurdles to finish eighth among all individuals.
The Chargers qualified for the relay finals with a time of 3:47.00 from the efforts of Dakota Stamm, Zalonya Eby, Alanna O’Leary and Shura Ermakov.