Six Red Raiders Qualify for NCAA Outdoor Championships
May 26, 2000 | Outdoor Track
May 26, 2000
LUBBOCK, Texas - In the first year under new head coach Wes Kittley, the Texas Tech track and field program is already starting to make great improvements. Some tangible evidence of this came last night when the NCAA announced a total of six Red Raider athletes have qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships next week in Durham, N.C..
The six athletes include four members of the women's team, representing the largest single-season group of qualifiers in the history of the women's program.
"Overall we are happy with the group we got in," Kittley said. "We had a couple more athletes who had provisional times but just didn't make the cut so we are a little disappointed about that. Overall we are very excited about the group we do have going."
The two members of the men's team selected to compete are Gezachw Yossef in the 1,500-meter run and Jason Young in the discus. Yossef is a junior who transferred to Texas Tech from Lindenwood College, a NAIA school outside of St. Louis, Mo. Yossef was an All-American during the indoor season when he finished eighth in the mile run at the NCAA Indoor Championships. Young, a freshman from Dallas, qualified in the discus with a season best throw of 58.80 meters (192'-11").
The qualifiers on the women's side are Tami Zachary and Monique Wright-Cruse in the 100-meter dash, Sherri Coleman in the 200-meter dash, and Ngozi Iwu in the 800-meter run. Zachary and Cruse, a junior and sophomore respectively, were among the top qualifiers in the 100-meters. Zachary ran a season best time of 11.34 while Cruse topped out with a time of 11.36. Coleman, the only senior in the group of qualifiers, had the nation's 12th best time in the 200, 23.28. Iwu, a junior from Houston, made the cut in the 800 with her season best time of 2:06.42. All four athletes are first time NCAA qualifiers.
The NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, hosted by Duke University, run May 31 - June 3.