ACU to send bevy of athletes to Kansas

Wildcats qualify 26 for national meet

ACU men trying to win 5th straight outdoor title

ABILENE -- The ACU Wildcats will have 26 individual athletes and four relays in next week's NCAA Division II outdoor championship meet after the final qualifier list was revealed Tuesday afternoon.

The ACU women will send 12 individual athletes in 14 events and both relays to the meet, while the ACU men will send 14 individual athletes in nine events and both relays to the meet, which will be contested May 25-27 at the Zola Witten Track at Welch Stadium on the campus of Emporia State University in Emporia, Kan.

The ACU men are the defending outdoor national champion, having won their fourth straight outdoor championship last year in Abilene. The Wildcats, however, were second in March at the indoor championship meet, and they need to win the meet next week to continue their streak of four straight years with at least one national championship.

The ACU women -- who finished second two months ago at the indoor championship meet -- will be trying to win the program's first national championship since the 2000 indoor meet, and its first outdoor national title since 1999, the last time the meet was held at Emporia State.

ACU distance star Nicodemus Naimadu -- one of the top distance runners in the nation, regardless of level -- qualified No. 1 in both the 3000-meter steeplechase and the 5000 meters. Last month at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, Calif., Naimadu set a new ACU and Lone Star Conference best-ever in the 5000 meters, finishing in 13:34.98, breaking the old record of former ACU standout Alfred Rugema, who clocked a 13:38.65 on March 31, 2001, at the Stanford Invitational.

Late last month at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Naimadu won the college men's 3000 steeplechase in 8:29.82, a mark that makes him the top qualifier in the nation going into next week's national meet. That time is a new LSC and ACU best-ever, and makes him the No. 3 performer in the event in NCAA Division II history.

Senior Yevgen Pashchenko will be competing in his final meet as a Wildcat next week, and he qualified in both the long jump and triple jump, as did junior Vladyslav Gorbenko. Pashchenko qualified fifth in the long jump and fourth in the triple jump, while Gorbenko qualified third in the triple jump and 11th in the long jump.

Pashchenko, the runner-up in the triple jump at last month's LSC championship meet in Stephenville, finished second in the triple jump and sixth in the long jump at the indoor championship meet in March. Gorbenko, the LSC triple jump champion, was third in the triple jump at the indoor championship meet.

Junior sprinter Marvin Bien-Aime, the defending national champion in the 200 meters, qualified second in the 100 meters (10.43) and third in the 200 meters (20.87), while Brant Gilbert qualified in both the 100 and 200 meters. Freshman Jordan Johnson qualified seventh in the 200 meters and fifth in the 400 meters.

Besides Johnson, the Wildcats had four other athletes qualify in the 400 meters: Bobby Tatum (eighth), Elton Garus-Oab (ninth), Delt Cockrell (10th) and Johnny Jacob (16th).

Both ACU relay teams qualified as the top teams in the nation with the 4x100 relay team turning in the first sub-40.00 time in Division II this season. The Wildcats churned out a 39.99 last week at the ACU Open at Elmer Gray Stadium, the best time turned in by an ACU 4x100 relay team since a 39.55 clocked in 2000.

The Wildcats' 4x400 relay team turned in a 3:06.06 last month at the Penn Relays, and that is the top qualifying time in the nation, and the best time a Wildcat team has turned in since a 3:05.71 in 1999.

Senior pole vaulter Cory Aguilar is back in the championship field after missing the indoor championship meet in March. Aguilar qualified fourth in the nation with a vault of 16-8.00.

On the women's side, senior distance standout Trina Cox qualified No. 1 in the 3000 steeplechase and third in the 5000 meters. Cox has been the best steeplechase runner in the nation this year with wins at both the Texas Relays and Penn Relays.

At the Penn Relays, Cox won the steeplechase with a time of 10:05.19, shattering her Division II record (set three weeks earlier at the Texas Relays) by more than three seconds. Her time is the fifth-fastest time run by an American this year, and the fastest time posted by a collegiate female, regardless of division.

Freshman sensation Kim Prather qualified fourth in the 100 meters (11.66) and fifth in the 200 meters (23.98), and she will also run on the Wildcats' second-ranked 4x100 relay team (46.13).

Senior Olha Kryv'yak qualified second in the 3000 meters (9:43.41) and fifth in the 1500 meters (4:30.17), while sophomore Shawna-Kaye Thompson qualified fifth in the 400 hurdles and seventh in the 100 hurdles.

Another freshman, multi-sport standout Jessica Withrow of Muleshoe, qualified in three events: second in the heptathlon, third in the high jump and 19th in the long jump.

ACU's only other athlete in the field events will be junior pole vaulter Angie Aguilar, who two months ago in Boston won the indoor national championship in the event. Aguilar enters next week's national meet ranked No. 1 in the nation in the vault after clearing 13-0.25 earlier this season.