KEENE, N.H. – An impressive indoor season that has seen Keene State College junior track and field athlete Aidan Law set three individual school records and help set a new relay school record has one more stop: the NCAA championship.

His long jump mark of 7.26 meters - .12 meters better than his previous school record set on February 22 – yesterday at the Tufts National Qualifying Meet made him a virtual lock to qualify, and the Higganum, Conn. native will indeed be headed to the Golisano Training Center on the campus of Nazareth University in Rochester, N.Y. later this week to compete on the national stage after the official qualifying lists were released Sunday evening on ncaa.com.  The long jump event will take place on Friday (March 14) at 3:30 p.m., where Law is seeded ninth of 20 competitors in a jam-packed field where second place and 20th place are separated by .20 meters. 

Yesterday, Law's new record mark came in his second attempt after he posted a 7.03-meter jump in the first try.  He won the event by .13 meters over Kane Demers of Bowdoin College, who recorded his best jump on his final attempt but was still short of Law by a wide margin.  The previous KSC record in the event, also by Law, came at the Little East championships two weeks ago when he was the runner up behind Eastern Connecticut State University sophomore Michael Collins Jr. (7.27 meters).  Collins will also be among the field, seeded sixth with a 7.32-meter jump that he achieved at the Art Kadish Elm City Challenge (Southern Connecticut State University) on December 13. 

The top seed in the men's long jump event entering the NCAAs is defending individual national champion Joshua Rivers of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, posting an impressive 8.13-meter PR mark at a home meet the Titans hosted on December 6.  He has consistently recorded jumps of 7.70 meters or better, though his most recent performance in the event was a 7.50-meter leap at the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships a week ago.  Last year at the NCAA indoor championships, Rivers jumped 7.58 meters to comfortably beat runner-up Henry Brandstadter (Emory University; 7.34 meters).  In last year's field, Law's 7.26 mark would have finished third.

The NCAA qualification is another step for the Owls and head coach Dan Roark, who continues to see the program take major steps forward.  The KSC men last had an indoor qualifier in 2020 when Ben Musese made it in the triple jump, but the meet was cancelled, and prior to that the Owls had not had a qualifier since 2014 when Ryan Widzgowski made it in the 800 meters (finishing sixth) and the mile (finishing second, less than two seconds behind individual national champion Coby Horowitz of Bowdoin College) to help Keene State to a 19th-place team finish of 66 scoring teams with 11 points.

Law is the first ever maOwl to qualify in the long jump, and just the third male athlete in the Division III era to earn his way to nationals in any jumping event (Arthur Dybizbanski qualified in the high jump in 2000 and 2002 and the aforementioned Musese in the triple jump in 2020).

The KSC men have set (not including record breakers re-breaking their own records) new school best marks in seven different events this indoor season on the heels of both cross country teams capturing the Little East championship in cross country.  It was Jake Velazquez who punctuated the fall, winning the east region individually and achieving All-American status at the NCAA cross country championships.

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