Six more Lobos punched their ticket to the NCAA Championships on Saturday, totaling 10 athletes that will head to Eugene Oregon for a shot at collegiate gold at the western preliminaries.
Sophie Connor, Emily Hosker-Thornhill, Calli Thackery, Aasha Marler and Janell Hadnot and Josh Kerr will all join Alice Wright, Courtney Frerichs, Allan Hamilton, and Elmar Engholm who qualified for the NCAAs on Friday.
“It was a great day,” head coach Joe Franklin said on Saturday, according to a UNM release. “The men and women competed very, very well. The weather in Kansas didn’t cause a problem. Obviously, it wasn’t an overly fun weekend dealing with the weather, but the students really lit it up with their performances.”
Nearly half of the athletes wearing a New Mexico uniform qualified to participate on the national stage (10 of 21). The 10 athletes representing UNM is the most in program history since the current regionals system began in 2010.
The Lobos were also just one athlete away from the most ever in program history when the squad sent 11 back in 2009. At the prelims, the top 12 athletes automatically receive a spot in the National Championships.
"The 11 was under a different qualifying system, a four-region system, so the qualifying was very different back then," Franklin said in the release. "Now it's the East and the West, so to get seven women and three guys is remarkable."
Hosker-Thornhill received an at-large bid with her personal best of 4 minutes, 18.55 seconds in the 1500-meter race because she didn’t finish among the top two times in her group. However, she waited it out and finished 11th overall, giving her a spot in the NCAAs.
Connor was able to take home an automatic bid after winning in heat four of her section with a time of 4:21.27.
Thackery, a junior, snagged seventh in the 5000-meter with her time of 16:16.15. However, like Hosker-Thornhill, her sixth place finish required a waiting period because she didn’t finish in the top-five of her respected heat.
Jannell Hadnot and Aasha Marler both garnered their spots in Eugene in the triple jump.
Marler, a local Albuquerque senior, was granted access to the big dance with her 11th place jump of 42 feet 2 inches.
Hadnot booked her ticket the hard way, but with an exclamation point. She waited until the final jump where she unleashed a 43 – 10 leap, the best in the prelims. Her previous two jumps would not have been enough to make nationals.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Kerr, the only member of the men’s team to qualify took seventh in the 1500 with a time of 3:43.67.
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Liam_CE.
