Nine athletes qualify for indoor national championships

PROVO, Utah – Nine BYU athletes will compete at the NCAA Men's and Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships on March 9 in Texas.

Four athletes will compete on the men’s side. Rory Linkletter, Daniel Carney and Connor McMillan will all represent BYU in the 5000m race.

Linkletter finished 11th (13:57.62) at nationals in the 5000m last year. His qualifying time for nationals this year is 13:41.01. This is both Carney and McMillan’s first time qualifying for the indoor national championships. Carney qualified with a time of 13:41.32 and McMillan qualified at 13:46.71.

Abraham Alvarado earned his qualifying spot in the 800m race with his 1:47.98 finish. Alvarado placed 13th in the preliminaries at nationals last year (1:49.25).

Five athletes will compete for the women. Four of those athletes, Ashleigh Warner, Brenna Porter, Kristi Rush-Briggs and Whittni Orton, comprise the women’s DMR team. They qualified for nationals with a time of 11:01.77. Porter and Warner both competed in the DMR at the indoor championships last year and helped the Cougars to a fourth-place finish.

Orton will also compete in the mile. She earned her spot for nationals when she broke the BYU school record with her time of 4:34.88. This will be her first time competing at the indoor national level and she is the only Cougar competing in multiple events.

Andrea Stapleton-Johnson qualified for the high jump with a 1.83m mark. She competed at the championships last year and placed 13th overall.

Live championship results will be available here.