Cougars add 3 more national qualifiers on second day of NCAA West Prelims

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – BYU track and field added three more national qualifiers to increase their total to 10 on Friday at the NCAA Track and Field Prelims.

"It was a day of near misses and a day of great completions," BYU head coach Ed Eyestone said. "We added a few national qualifiers, but also had several athletes just miss out."

Matt Owens and Clayson Shumway punched their tickets to compete in the 3000m steeplechase at the 2018 NCAA Track and Field Championships while also moving up on BYU’s all-time record board. Owens finished second in the steeplechase standings with a personal-best 8:36.73 for the No. 6 time in BYU history. Shumway ran a career-best 8:36.76 for the third-best time and No. 7 in school history.

Steeplechasers Jacob Heslington and Daniel Carney were the top-two athletes left out of qualifying position after failing to secure a bid to nationals. Heslington finished 11th overall (8:44.46) but athletes below him finished in the top three of their heat to earn the automatic qualifying position.

After easily winning her heat in the first round of the 400m hurdles on Thursday, Brenna Porter clocked a career-best 57.18 to secure her spot in the NCAA Championships. Porter's time improves her hold on the No. 2 time in BYU history.

Alyssa Dalton (13.36) finished third in her heat to advance to Saturday’s 100m hurdles quarterfinal (7:20 p.m. PDT). Teammate Nicole Lord tripped up on a hurdle early on in her heat and ended up finishing with a 13.84 to miss qualification.

Derek Sorensen qualified for the 200m quarterfinal (Saturday at 7:35 p.m. PDT) by 0.002 seconds with an official time of 21.274. Clark Brown ran a 21.34 in the 200m to miss qualifying for the quarterfinal by three spots. Abraham Alvarado missed qualifying for nationals by 0.12 seconds in the 800m after clocking a 1:49.00 in the quarterfinal.

Olivia Hoj ran a career-best 10:05.45 in the 3000m steeplechase and barely missed advancing to the NCAA Championships by two spots. Maddie Cannon ran a 10:09.78 to finish eighth in her heat while Emma Gee and Sara Musselman both earned personal-bests with times of 10:19.95 and 10:23.26, respectively.

BYU will wrap up competition at the NCAA West Prelims tomorrow with athletes competing in the men’s shot put, 1500m, 200m, and 5000m as well as the women’s hammer, 1500m, 100m hurdles, 5000m and 4x400m.

Competition will continue to be streamed on FloTrack.org and live updates will be posted on the BYU track and field team’s Twitter account @BYUTFXC. Heat sheets, the meet schedule and live stats can be found on NCAA.com.

• Day One Recap & Results

Friday's Results: