HCAC Sends Nine Athletes to NCAA Division III Track Championships
Men's Entry List / Women's Entry List
DELAWARE, OH - Four Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference schools have qualified student-athletes to the 2011 NCAA Division III Men's and Women's Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The event will be held Thursday through Saturday, May 26-28, at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.
Around 700 participants will compete in the championships. Student-athletes qualified for the championships by reaching the automatic and provisional standards established for each event. Competition will take place at Selby Field on the OWU campus.
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology will send six athletes, while Anderson University, Franklin College, and Manchester College will each send one athlete to the event.
Rose-Hulman's Sutton Coleman (Lebanon, Va./H.S.), Derek Bischak (Angola, Ind./H.S.), and Liz Evans (Bicknell, Ind./North Knox) qualified for a total of four individual events at the meet. Coleman will compete in the 400-meter hurdles on Thursday and the 110-meter high hurdles on Friday evening. The junior will compete in a field of 19 in the 400-meter event and 12 in the 110-meter race.
Bischak qualified 11th overall in the 1,500-meter run for his second career NCAA Division III Outdoor National Championship qualification effort. The senior will hit the track for preliminary competition Thursday evening.
Evans enters the national meet with the top ranked women’s high jump mark this outdoor season. The sophomore cleared 5’ 8.5” earlier this season and will look for her first outdoor national championship. Evans won the 2011 NCAA Division III indoor high jump national championship in February.
Coleman also qualified as a member of the RHIT 4X400-meter relay team. Coleman will be joined by sophomores Brent Austgen (Cedar Lake, Ind./Hanover Central) and Tyler Hannan (Winchester, Ky./George Rogers Clark) and senior Paul Bouagnon (St. Charles, Ill./Burlington Central) at the national meet. The effort marks the first national relay qualification in school history.
Anderson University's Leonard Wells (Warsaw, Ind./H.S.) qualified in the discus for the championship meet. The junior is ranked tenth in the field of 19 and will throw on Saturday afternoon. Wells also qualified for the outdoor national meet last spring.
Franklin’s Heather Waterman (Shelbyville, Ind./Morristown) will compete in the 5,000-meter run in Ohio this week. The senior holds the fifth-best outdoor time in the event this season, setting a school record with a mark of 16:58.60 at North Central College this past Thursday. Waterman will compete with 22 other athletes Saturday afternoon.
Manchester's Jessica Bremer (Howe, Ind./Prairie Heights) will make her first appearance at the outdoor national meet this week. The senior is seeded 18th in the 800-meter run and will race on Friday afternoon.
The top eight finishers in each event will earn All-American honors after the completion of event finals Saturday.
