BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Senior
Molly Lu McKellar set a new school record and earned second team All-America honors while junior
Tyler Bolaske extended his winter season one more day with a memorable comeback in the preliminaries of the mile as the Keene State College indoor track and field teams competed on the first day of the NCAA Division III indoor track and field championships at the Birmingham Crossplex on Friday.
McKellar set another school record en route to her pentathlon score of 3,482 points, which was also a new school record, breaking former individual national champion Janel Haggerty's 3,467 score from 2013. The senior from Hebron, N.H. began her day by besting her previous best and setting a new school record in the 60-meter hurdles by finishing in 8.93 (earning 925 points) to sit in sixth after the first event. She also set a new personal-best mark of 2:28.14 to close the day in the 800 meters. In between, she also threw the shot put 11.68 meters – second among the 20-competitor field – to vault to ninth place in the overall standings entering the final two events. McKellar posted a 1.52 meter high jump and a 4.99 meter long jump to round out the scoring in her first national appearance, which saw her again improve upon her most recent effort of 3,449 points at the New England Division III championships. She began her multi-meet season with an individual win at the Bates Invitational on January 16, scoring 3,207 points.
Defending national champion Elaina Styer of Stockton University was denied a repeat individual title in the pentathlon finishing with 3,765 points and was edged by Centre College's Serena McNeilly (3,782 points), who won both the high jump (1.79 meters) and the long jump (5.61 meters) and maintained a first-place standing for the final four events after opening with a 13th-place mark in the 60 hurdles (9.11). Styer trailed by 166 points entering the 800 and posted a time of 2:19.96 to conclude her day, but fell 17 points short. Styer won the 60 hurdles to start the day in front, while Amber Grosse of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse threw a 13.12 meter shot put to take gold in that event while McKellar took silver.
On the men's side, it was a memorable qualification in the final of the mile for Bolaske, who was tripped up late in the race and was in last in his heat entering the final lap before moving up an incredible six spots to snag the final automatic qualifying spot in his heat with a mark of 4:13.00. The junior from Palmer, Mass. shot up the leaderboard with an eye-popping 27.99 time on the final lap, and he ultimately finished just one tenth of a second behind heat winner and defending national champion Nicholas Lyndaker of St. Lawrence University and Rabbit Barnes of Colorado College (both posting times of 4:12.90). In what figured to be a close race entering the day, and what figures to be another tomorrow, the first heat saw all 10 runners within five seconds of each other, and the entire field was separated by just seven seconds after the second heat. But Bolaske avoided sweating out a painstaking wait to see if he qualified as one of the two at-larges by vaulting into the top four of the heat. Central College's Jack Brown ultimately won the preliminary race in 4:11.42, beating Jayden Zywicki of Wisconsin-La Crosse by five hundredths of a second.
Bolaske will look to make it an even more memorable day tomorrow (Saturday, March 14) in the final, which is slated to begin at 5:10 p.m. ET. The 10-runner field for the national championship will include Bolaske, Sam Su of John Carroll University, Matthew Short of Carnegie Mellon University, John Urciuoli of Emory University, Cole Stencel of St. John's University (Minn.), Jack Czarnecki of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Barnes, Brown, Zywicki, and Lyndaker.
Stay tuned for more information.
