7th in the Country

As great as 3rd in the NCAA sounds, 7th in the country might sound even better.  Sorry for the long delay with this posting.  I saved it as a draft and forgot to post it after such an exciting trip.  The final of the women's 1500 at the US Championships featured three collegians and nine professionals.  The winning time was the third slowest in the meets history due to no one being willing to lead on a hot and windy day.  They went out slower than the 10K gals did two nights before.  That, of course, favored the kickers and those who were not afraid to fail.  That perfectly describes how Amanda has run this year.  She led the early laps in front of national TV audience.  With 600 meters to go the pace started to pick up and she held off the pack.  With 400 to go she found herself surrounded and on the rail.  At 350 m to go she tripped, but quickly regained her stride and was able to hang on to the main pack that was now beginning to move hard down the backstretch.  Down the homestretch is was total chaos with runners in weaving in and out trying to secure the highest position they could.  Amanda landed in 7th and less than a full second from third.  It was that close!  Three first team All American honors and now 7th at the US National meet...what a season!

On to the Finals!

Those four words never get old and we've been able to say them a lot this year.  Amanda ran another strong prelim race at the US Championships and qualified for Saturday's 1500 meter final.  As one of only three collegians to qualify for the race it shows the quality of that event in the US.  She ran 4:15.54  to capture the final spot.  That is her sixth race with a time of 4:15 or faster in the last eight weeks.  Her slowest time of the year in that event is 4:20 in the prelim round at Pac-12's, which was an easy effort.

Saturday's final will be televised on Universal Sports Channel at 4:45p (CDT).  Check with your local cable provider regarding your channel lineup:)

If I can get pics from the prelims I'll post them asap.  I hope this season never ends!

We made it to Des Moines and the US Championships.  In usual Amanda fashion she has made another new friend.  2012 Olympic 400 Meter Gold Medallist, Sanya Richards-Ross, happened to be checking in at the same time as us.  After a short introduction and a photo op you'd have thought these two were old friends.  They chatted about bunions and commencement speeches among other topics.

Semi final race is today at 4:40p local time.  Go to www.usatf.org for video link and results.  This meet tends to place a little more emphasis on time than  the NCAA meet does in regard to qualifying.  Therefore, the advancement rules are top three in each heat and then the next six times.

Triplets!!!

I apologize for posting this great news so late.  It was a busy week last week.  I have trying to obtain some great photos (which I have seen, just haven't received permission to download yet) from the NCAA Championships.

In case you missed it...Amanda closed out her collegiate career by finishing third at the NCAA Championships in the 1500 meter race.  Her semifinal was tightly bunched, but she calmly placed fifth (automatic advancement) and moved into the final.

In the final she was about as aggressive as I've ever seen her.  With 900m to go she moved from seventh to second by literally jumping from the rail to lane two.  She stayed near the lead through 300m to go when the packed tightened back up as the readied for a big stretch sprint home.  With 200m to go she was in fifth but trapped on the rail again and everyone was bumping and banging or as Harry Hogg would say "Rubbin' is Racin'.  Amanda held her ground and the inside line down the final 100m and was able to beat all but two for her third First Team All American honor this year.  (14th in XC, 5th in the indoor mile).

First Team AA honors (top 40 in xc, top eight in both indoor and outdoor track) in the same academic year in all three sports is an extremely rare accomplishment.  I believe there were only five athletes in the entire NCAA who did that this year.  The other four were all long distance gals (3,000 meters and up).  Amanda was the only "middle distance" runner to do it.  There are numerous "land mines" that can sidetrack this effort from illness to injury to stress.  Amanda mostly avoided those issues or if she did have to deal with them it was not at championship time.

Up next:  Amanda will likely be competing in the 1500 meter race at the USA Championships on Thursday (and Saturday if she qualifies for the final).  The top three at this meet will represent the US at the World Championships later this summer.

I'll post pics from the NCAA as soon as I receive them.

Just a Hangin'

There is yet a new social media opportunity thanks to Google.  Someone has to be the guinea pig at Utah, so it might as well be us.  See the release below and please help us make it successful by sending a question.  

Utah Athletics will host its first-ever Google+ hangout on Monday, June 3 at noon MDT with Amanda Mergaert of the track and field team and head coach Kyle Kepler. Mergaert, a senior All-American in both cross country and track, has qualified for the NCAA Championships in the 1,500 meters for a third-consecutive year.

The hangout will be shown live on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/uathletics/videos) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/uathletics). We invite fans to submit questions via twitter with the hashtag #utehangout.

Back to Austin

Sorry for the long break between posts.  Struggling a bit with my blog service, but seems to be back up and running again.  The picture above is the crowd at our home meet which was awesome.  Here is a quick recap of what you missed.

At the Pac-12 Championships we finished 11th led by Amanda Mergaert's fourth place finish in the 1500 meter race.  She was only .7 from winning in an outstanding race.  Rebekah Winterton was sixth in the 10K.  Rosalie Waller and Andrea Chavez were sixth and seventh in the 800 meter final.  Destanae Howerton Davis took eighth in the discus as well.  We had several other top ten finishes.  I thought the effort was there, but I know we were disappointed not to score in a few more events and push our point total over what we scored a year ago.

The final qualifiers for the NCAA Preliminary rounds were announced earlier this week.  We were fortunate to have 10 athletes qualify in seven events:

Seniors
Amanda Mergaert:  800/1500 (will only run 1500m)
Steph Jolley:  400H
Klaudia Rokossa: Pole Vault
Anneli Stahl:  Hammer

Juniors
Rosalie Waller: 800
Destanae Howerton Davis:  Discus

Sophmores
Ali Eisenbeiss: 800
Susannah Hurst: 10K
Rebekah Winterton: 10K
Aoife Hickey: Hammer

Congrats to these gals for advancing to the Preliminary round held in Austin, TX this coming Thurs-Sat.  The top 12 in each event will move on to the NCAA Finals held June 6-9 in Eugene, OR.

Busy, busy

It's been a busy couple of weeks with meets in LA (Mt Sac Relays and Long Beach St Relays) and Des Moines (Drake Relays and Robison Invitational).  We also had the Senior Banquet in between.  Lots of great performances and a celebratory evening mixed in.  We won two awards at the Senior Banquet with Candus Ford winning the top female academic award and Lauren McKay picking up the Community Service award for all of her efforts outside of the track and classroom.  Well deserved to say the least!

This is final exam week and we have a final tune up meet at Weber State tonight with a few athletes.  Followed by graduation this weekend for our 12 seniors.  Next week we will put our full focus on the Pac-12 Championship meet which starts on May 11th at USC.  Be sure to watch my weekly press conference for more information about our results from this past weekend which included two school records and two third place finishes at Drake.

Coach Bockman has also set up an instagram page.  Search UtahTrack to find those pictures.