Meet Week Preview
NCAA West Preliminary Championships
May 23-25
Sacramento, Calif. | Hornet Stadium
Streaming on FloTrack (subscription required)
Aztecs On to Regionals
The Aztecs will have 11 athletes competing across seven events at the NCAA West Preliminary Championships May 23-25 at Sacramento State's Hornet Stadium. 12 from each event will advance to the NCAA Outdoor Championships in two weeks in Austin, Texas. For all track events, the first round will consist of six heats of eight competitors. The top three from each heat plus the next best six times will advance to the quarterfinal round, which will have three heats of eight runners. The top three from each heat plus the next best three times will advance to the semi-final round at the Final Championship competition in Austin, Texas in two weeks. For the field events, the discus throw and the pole vault, the competitors with the 12 best marks advance.
Sophomore Maya Brosch will kick things off for the Aztecs when she competes in the 400m hurdles Thursday at 4:30 p.m. She has raced a personal best time in each of the last three races and earned a silver medal at the MW Outdoor Championships. Next up will be fellow sophomore Callista Fletcher, who will be running the 100m dash at 6:30 p.m. She will also compete in the 200m dash Friday evening. She finished second in the 200m and fourth in the 100m at the MW Championships.
Freshman Nyjari McNeil will wrap up Thursday, running the 800m at 8:10 p.m. She just posted the second-best 800 time in school history (2:05.27).
On Friday there will be the finals for the 100m (6:00 p.m.), the 800m (6:30 p.m.) and the 400m hurdles (7:00 p.m.) as well as the first round of the 200m dash. Freshman Erica Grotegeer will also compete in the discus throw on Friday, beginning at noon. She had a throw of 175-00 to take fourth at the MW Championships.
SDSU will have four pole vaulters competing on Friday as well, beginning at 5:00 p.m. Bonnie Draxler, the 2019 NCAA Indoor runner-up, leads the SDSU vaulters. She is coming off her sixth overall Mountain West pole vault championship and currently has the second-best mark in the nation (14-09.50). She will be joined by Kaitlin Heri (13-11.00), Marissa Berry (13-06.25) and freshman Alysia Allen (13-02.25), who just earned a silver medal at the MW Outdoor Championships.
On Saturday, in the final race of the meet, the Aztecs will run in the 4x400m relay, which just won the gold medal at the MW Championships. Freshman Nyjari McNeil, sophomores Jalyn Harris and Sakura Roberson and senior Lisa-Anne Barrow ran the sixth fastest time in school history (3:35.02). Last year, Harris and Barrow helped the Aztecs' 4x400m relay team finish ninth at the prelims to advance to the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the first time since 2006.
Fans can watch a live stream of the NCAA Division I West Preliminary Championships as FloTrack Pro subscribers. The subscription will include access to all FloTrack live broadcasts, video on-demand from all events, documentaries, technique videos and more.
Aztec Tidbits
- This is the fifth consecutive year the Aztecs have had at least 10 athletes qualify for prelims.
- Of the 11 Aztecs selected for the NCAA prelims, eight are freshmen or sophomores.
- For the three SDSU upperclassmen (Barrow, Berry and Draxler), they have combined to compete in 10 NCAA West Prelims.
- For the fourth time in program history the Aztecs will send four pole vaulters to the West Prelims (2008, '13, '15 and '19). Since 1999, SDSU has sent at least three vaulters to the West Prelims 10 times.
- Should an Aztec advance to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, SDSU will have had a representative at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in 22 of the past 23 years.