NCAA Division III Indoor Championships Preview

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C – NCAA Division III indoor track & field championships kick off tomorrow morning at the JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We’ll be covering the meet on site, with live updates, stories, video interviews, and more.

Below are ten events to watch this weekend; here are the full men’s entries, women’s entries, and live video link.

Men’s 3000 Meters

Saturday, 4:45 ET

Unlike the other five divisions and sexes (i.e. men and women in DI, DII, and DIII), the Division III men’s cross country champ hasn’t followed up his hill and dale title on bank and boards since Peter Kosgei did so in 2009. That sample size is small enough to discount it if you want to, but big enough to discern a pattern if you stare it for long enough.

2014 cross country champ and indoor 3k runner-up Grant Wintheiser of St. Olaf is one of three men in this race who has run 8:13 this season. The 3k should be a particularly spicy race this meet, as Wintheiser and fellow 8:13 man Charlie Marquardt of Haverford are both going to be fresh for the final distance event of the meet.

Those two will face off against RIT’s Matt Giannino (the third 8:13 guy), who will be doubling back from the 5k, and WIAC studs Josh Thorson of Eau Claire and Dawson Miller of Whitewater, both of whom will be doubling back from the DMR.

The best bet is a Wintheiser-Marquardt showdown in the last thousand meters. The duo have by far the best mid-distance credentials in the field, with Marquardt by far the fastest miler in DIII this winter at 4:04 and Wintheiser sporting a shiny 3:48 1500 PR.

Neither of those two has shown a propensity to be particularly aggressive in the early stages of big races; if they stick to that track record, look for the race to play out one of two ways. Either it’ll be a classic championship jogfest with the big guns nervously eyeing each other until the second half of the race, or Giannino, Miller, or an unknown third party will push the pace.

Men’s 60-Meters Hurdles

Final: Saturday, 2:15 ET

Salisbury’s Luke Campbell, Worcester State’s Terrence Gibson, Bridgewater State’s Conor Murtaugh, and Wabash’s Ronnie Posthauer are first, second, seventh, and ninth on the DIII all-time indoor list. Adding to the intrigue of an already stacked event is that all four have topped out between 7.93 and 8.00 this year.

Though neither Campbell nor Gibson has broken 7.90 this year, they’re the co-favorites to go 1-2. Last year, the pair came into nationals with season bests of 7.97 and 7.99, and they ran 7.75 and 7.82 in the final to mark themselves as the two best DIII performers in the history of the event. It’s not about comparing yourself to where you were last year; it’s about comparing yourself to where you were at this point last year, and the two best hurdlers in DIII history are ahead of where they were at this point last year.

Murtagh and Gibson have raced once this year, with Gibson edging out Murtagh by one one-hundredth of a second. Though Posthauer is less of a known quantity with a season and career best of 8.00, he hasn’t lost this year. There’s a chance that elite competition could push him into the top three.

Men’s 800 Meters

Final: Saturday, 3:55 ET

No less than five men are back from last year’s final: Andrew Carey of Johns Hopkins, Mitch Black and Veer Bhalla of Tufts, Thomas Vandenberg of Carnegie Mellon, and Michael Harnish of Lebanon Valley.

The Black-Carey matchup is the highlight here. They’re the only two in the field to have dipped under 1:50 in their careers, though Carey hasn’t done it this season. Black has run an absurd 1.67 seconds faster than the rest of the country this winter.

Carey lost his conference meet in the 800, but won the 400 less than an hour before; he was the runner-up indoors last year and is the defending outdoor champ. Black’s championship resume isn’t far behind—he was third behind Carey indoors and second behind him outdoors last year.

The old saw is that taller runners struggle with the tight turns of indoors. Carey isn’t just tall; his enormous limbs make him look like a lactic-acid-laden spider when he races. Of course, that didn’t stop him from beating Black at indoor nationals last year, though that was on a banked track.

If these two get out in the sweet spot of 53 seconds or so, the meet record of 1:49.73 could be in danger.

Men’s Weight Throw

Friday, 10:30 AM ET

From a historical perspective, this might be the most loaded field event of the meet. Three of the top seven performers in Division III history are in the meet, with Mount Union’s Sean Donnelly (20.98/No.2), Bates’s Sean Enos (20.17/No. 7), and Oshkosh’s Grant Havard (20.19 last year/No. 6) leading the way.

At 20.98 meters, Donnelly is just six centimeters from the national record. He’s the defending national champ in the weight, but has fouled out of the shot at the last two indoor national meets. With his wins in the shot and hammer at outdoor nationals last May, it appears that Donnelly has finally mastered the throwing equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time. But it will be interesting to see if there’s any relationship between Donnelly’s explosive performance in the weight and excessively explosive steps in the shot this year.

Men’s 60 Meters

Final: Saturday, 3:25 ET

Eau Claire’s Thurgood Dennis is the two-time defending champ, national record holder, and the heavy favorite here, especially with Eau Claire gunning for a team title. Cobleskill’s Winston Lee is tied with Dennis for the nation’s fastest time in the 60 at 6.76 seconds, though Dennis ran 6.68 to set his NR at nationals last March.

The fastest man in the field without two first names is Greenville’s Bruce Gray. He’s been a perennial bridesmaid, with three runner-up finishes and two more third places at nationals over the last three years. With Dennis and Lee in good form this year, he might be catching a silver- or bronze-dyed bouquet again.

Women’s 5000 Meters

Friday, 5:25 ET

Could there be a redux of the epic championship race between Lucy Cheadle and Amy Regan from November? Stevens’s Regan has the nation’s fastest time at 16:40—the fifth best in Division III history—but like this fall, WashU’s Cheadle hasn’t lost a distance race to a DIII athlete.

Regan has the slight edge on paper. She has a faster time than Cheadle in every distance this year, winning the mile 5:00 to 5:07, the 3k 9:41 to 9:49, and the 5k 16:40 to 16:44. Cheadle finished one place ahead of Regan in both the three and the five last March, and both have improved tremendously, but Regan has improved more.

There’s actually a woman sandwiched between the two on the descending order list: Frances Loeb of Johns Hopkins. Loeb ran 16:42 at Penn State to become the No. 9 performer in DIII history the the same day that Regan ran 16:40 at the Armory, and has a faster mile (4:55) and 3k (9:37) than either of the women covered above.

The gap in Loeb’s resume is championship experience. She’s never been an All-American on the track, and has won exactly one individual conference championship in her career. Of course, she has much better teammates gobbling up conference titles than Cheadle and Regan do, and this might be the healthiest and fittest she’s ever been heading into an NCAA meet. We’ll see on Friday night.

Women’s Weight Throw

Friday, 4:30 PM ET

Two of the best weight throwers in DIII will face off for the fifth time this season. Oshkosh’s Melanie Brickner has edged out Whitewater’s Shelby Mahr all four times they’ve gone against each other this season, but it’s usually been close. Brickner’s PB of 19.28m is 38cm (about 13 inches) better than Mahr’s 18.90m; the two are nearly a full meter clear of the rest of the country.

If Mahr loses for a fifth time, she can take consolation in one thing: at least she has her school record. Though Brickner is the sixth best weight thrower in DIII history and Mahr is tied for the tenth, Brickner is only the fourth best thrower in Oshkosh school history.

Women’s 60 Meters

Final: Saturday, 3:15 ET

Lehman’s Adrian Wright has the explosiveness to set the national record in the hurdles, and the pure speed to set the NR in the 200, so she’s the obvious candidate to win the 60 meters at nationals, right? Maybe. Despite her sterling one-night double in the 60H and 200, she’s run a full 0.11 seconds slower than Puget Sound’s Allanah Whitehall has this season.

Whitehall’s 7.56 makes her the seventh best performer in DIII history, and Central’s Abigail Davis has the tenth best DIII PB ever at 7.59 seconds, though she ran it last year. Davis and Wright are tied on the descending order list at 7.67 this year.

If beating the historically excellent Whitehall weren’t difficult enough, Wright also has to do it in the fifth of her six races this weekend. She’ll have prelims and finals in the hurdles, 200, and flat 60, while Whitehall is only focusing on the 60.

Women’s Long Jump

Friday, 11:00 AM ET

With Baldwin-Wallace star Melanie Winters skipping the LJ to focus on the pentathlon and high jump, this might be the most wide open event of the meet. The top four athletes are separated by four centimeters, roughly equivalent to the top four women being separated by three-tenths of a second in the 800.

Amber Williams of Platteville won the WIAC meet and is tied for the top entry at 5.81 meters, but Whitewater’s Lexie Sondgeroth didn’t do the long jump at the conference meet, is the only woman among the top four to have gone farther than six meters in her career, and is the defending outdoor national champion.

Sondgeroth isn’t bulletproof, though. She’s only jumped twice this indoor season, going 5.57m at home and going 5.77 at the Stevens Point last chance meet to make nationals. The door is open for La Crosse’s Bailey Alston, Illinois Wesleyan first-year Amelia Glueck (unbeaten against DIII comp this year), and Cortland’s Taylor Hudson.

Women’s Distance Medley Relay

Friday, 6:10 ET

MIT seems like the clear favorite here, but with breakout star Maryann Gong doubling back from the mile prelims four and a half hours earlier, an upset isn’t completely unfathomable. To the Engineers’ advantage: in addition to having run seven full seconds faster than any other team has, nearly all of the other best teams—including WashU (Cheadle is listed on their DMR just 45 minutes after the 5k), Hopkins, and Middlebury—have women doubling back from the events earlier on Friday.

The top two teams with completely fresh lineups are Chicago and Williams. It’s unlikely, though, that freshness will be enough to cover the eleven and fifteen seconds, respectively, separating those two from MIT. And it’s even more unlikely that without the edge of freshness, WashU, Hopkins, and Middlebury will be able to cover similar gaps.