Falcons Head to NCAA Outdoor Championship Preliminary Round
5/25/2010 12:00:00 AM | Track and Field
May 25, 2010
The 2010 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships get underway this week for 13 members of the Air Force program. The select Falcons will travel to Austin, Texas, for the NCAA West Preliminary Meet, which begins on Thursday, May 27, and continues through Saturday, May 29. The top 12 finishers from each event at the preliminary site will move on to the NCAA National Championships in June.
Meet Notes 18: at NCAA Outdoor Championships (West Preliminary Round) 
MEET INFORMATION
The 2010 NCAA Outdoor Championships (West Preliminary) will be held May 27-29 at Mike A. Myers Stadium on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Live streaming of the West Preliminary can be accessed on the official website of the NCAA.
WHO'S IN...
Sara Neubauer (shot put, discus throw, hammer throw) and Bryce Bergman (110-meter hurdles, 400-meter hurdles) earned multiple incursions to the national preliminary meet, while Air Force earned several selections in the 800-meter run (Ally Romanko, Tyler Stanley), pole vault (Nick Frawley, Kimber Shealy) and javelin throw (Paige Blackburn, Conner Van Fossen, Katie Weber). Robert Drye (hammer throw), Manuel Smith (400-meter dash), James Walmsley (5000-meter run) and Alex Zubey (1500-meter run) also qualified for the meet.
LET'S NOT FORGET...
Two additional Falcons - Joel Nolan (pole vault) and Justin Tyner (3000-meter steeplechase, 5000-meter run) - qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Championships, but did not declare for the competition. Nolan will be getting married Saturday, while Tyner is nursing a stress fracture in his foot.
A NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS...
This year, instead of having four regional meets as a prelude to the national meet, the NCAA Outdoor Championships will be contested as one large event. The national championship begins this weekend (May 27-29) at two preliminary sites. The first-round meets, which are divided into the East (Greensboro, N.C.) and West (Austin, Texas) preliminaries, will feature the top 48 declared athletes in each event. The top 12 finishers from the East and West Preliminary will advance to the national meet on June 9-12.
A BUSY WEEK FOR THE NEWEST AIR FORCE OFFICERS
Four members of the Falcons' travel squad will attend their graduation ceremony on Wednesday morning, before heading to Austin, Texas. Nick Frawley, Sara Neubauer, Ally Romanko and Katie Weber will be commissioned as second lieutenants in the U.S. Air Force. Neubauer will have the fastest turnaround, as her first event is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Thursday. Romanko and Weber will compete on Thursday evening, while Frawley's event is scheduled for Friday afternoon.
TWICE AS NICE
Sara Neubauer and Katie Weber teamed up to claim three of the four conference throwing titles at the MWC Championships. Neubauer claimed her first conference titles in the shot put and discus throw, while Weber earned her first such honor in the javelin throw. It is the first time since 2005 - and only the fourth-time ever - that one Mountain West Conference school (men or women) have taken first in three of the four throwing titles.
FALCONS CLAIM 11 ALL-CONFERENCE AWARDS
Highlighted by four medals from Sara Neubauer, the Falcons claimed 11 all-conference selections at the MWC Championships in Albuquerque, N.M., over the May 12-15 weekend. In all, seven individuals and one relay team earned top-three finishes in their respective events. Bryce Bergman, Nick Frawley, Jonathan Rock, Justin Tyner, Conner Van Fossen and Katie Weber earned individual honors, while Bergman, Chris Severino, Tyler Stanley and Manuel Smith teamed up on the 4x400-meter relay.
DID YOU KNOW?
Sara Neubauer became the first-ever MWC athlete (male or female) to earned all-conference honors in all four throwing events at the outdoor championship meet. Neubauer won the shot put and discus throw, while placing third in the hammer and javelin throws. In fact, the senior also won both throwing titles at the indoor meet, bringing her season total to four titles and six all-conference awards.
WANT MORE HIGHLIGHTS?
For more highlights from the 2010 Mountain West Conference Outdoor Track and Field Championships, click here.
WHAT'S ON DECK
The top 12 finishers from each of the two preliminary sites will move on to the final round of the NCAA Outdoor Championships. The four-day national championship meet will be held on June 9-12 at historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore.
Players Mentioned
