May 27, 2010
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Iowa City, IA — A handful of Hawkeyes were in competition on day one of the NCAA Preliminaries in Austin, TX, with ten advancing to Eugene, OR, or competing in quarterfinal events later this weekend, including freshman Jeff Thode setting an Iowa record in the 1,500 meters.
Thode will advance in the 1,500 meters, coming in at 13th overall with a school-record 3:43.02. This is Thode’s second record held at Iowa, as he broke the indoor mile record (4:03.07) earlier this season. Senior Ray Varner, coming off a Big Ten Championship, placed second in his heat and tenth overall in the 400-meter hurdles at 51.16. Varner came into this weekend ranked seventh in the West region. Sophomore D’Juan Richardson barely missed the cut for the 400-meter hurdles, coming in 25th overall at 52.01. Richardson will compete again as part of the 400-meter relay on Saturday.
Junior Lauren Hardesty and sophomore Betsy Flood will both advance in the 1,500 meters after placing 13th (4:21.67) and 18th (4:24.41) in today’s preliminaries, respectively. Hardesty’s time is a collegiate-best that moves her up to seventh all-time at Iowa. Sophomore McKenzie Melander just missed the cutoff, placing 27th overall at 4:26.94. Junior Zeke Sayon will move on to the 100-meter dash quarterfinals, tying his collegiate best of 10.51 to place him 12th overall. Iowa will send a pair of juniors into Friday’s 400-meter dash quarterfinals, with Steven Willey and Chris Barton earning 13th (46.30) and 22nd (47.04) seeds Thursday. Barton’s time is a collegiate-best. Sophomore Erik Sowinski will advance in the 800 meters, earning the 19th seed today at 1:48.75.
All of Iowa’s running qualifiers will move on to a quarterfinal round later this weekend, where the top twelve seeds will then move on to the NCAA Championships in Eugene, OR on June 9.
In Thursday’s field events, freshman Matt Byers and sophomore Ryan Lamparek earned top twelve seedings to send them to the NCAA Championships in Eugene, OR. Beyers earned a ninth-place seeding in the javelin, throwing 220-09 (67.28m). Byers came into this weekend ranked 13th in the West region. Lamparek posted a collegiate-best 58-4 (17.78m) in the shot put, placing him 11th overall. Lamparek now ranks ninth all-time at Iowa in the shot put.
The NCAA preliminaries will continue Friday with field events at 12 p.m. CT at running events at 4:30 p.m. A link to live results and the CBS Sports Live Stream can be found on the Track schedule page on www.hawkeyesports.com.