Texas Tech University Athletics
Texas Tech Set For NCAA Outdoor Championships
June 09, 2015 | Track and Field
EUGENE, Ore. -- Sixteen athletes from the Texas Tech No. 12 women's and No. 13 men's track & field teams are set to compete at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, June 10-13, at historic Hayward Field, in Eugene, Ore.
"At this meet, I expect our athletes to perform at the highest level," Texas Tech head coach Wes Kittley said. "We are competing against the best of the best this week. This is what we have trained for and been looking toward all season. I'm expecting big marks and great performances out here."
The entirety of the championships will be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks, with coverage jumping between ESPN, ESPN 2 and ESPN U.
On Wednesday, Kyle Thompson (pole vault) and Jerome Wilson (Long Jump) will compete in their NCAA finals, while the men's 4 x 400m relay will compete in its semifinal.
Thursday, Le'Tristan Pledger (100m hurdles), Cierra White (100m & 200m dash) and Montene Speight (400m dash) will run their semifinal races, while Pledger and Gionna Jackson will compete in the long jump final, and Hannah Carson will go for the NCAA javelin title.
Friday and Saturday will feature running event finals, but also select field events. The men's high jump (JaCorian Duffield, Bradley Adkins & Trey Culver) and discus (Kole Weldon) will be Friday, while the women's triple jump (Paetyn Revell) will be on Saturday.
Duffield could become the first male Red Raider to have both an indoor and outdoor NCAA title to his credit. He would be the third Tech athlete overall to earn that distinction (Sally Kipyego & Leigh Daniel).
The Red Raiders earned five USTFCCCA Mountain Region postseason awards this week, tied with Oregon for the most regional awards in the country by one school.
Out of the Blocks
- Texas Tech track & field has sent at least one athlete to the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the 16th-straight year under head coach Wes Kittley.
- Texas Tech's women's (No. 12) and men's (No. 13) track and field teams have each been ranked in the top 20 for the duration of the outdoor season so far.
- Texas Tech earned five USTFCCCA Mountain Region awards this week, tied for the most in the country by one school (Oregon):
Kole Weldon -- Men's Field Athlete of the Year
Cierra White -- Female Track Athlete of the Year
Wes Kittley -- Men's Coach of the Year
James Thomas -- Men's & Women's Assistant of the Year
- Texas Tech's six individual Big 12 titles in Ames were the most for the program at a single conference meet since 2009.
- At the Big 12 Championships, Kole Weldon earned the title of the meet's high point scorer for the second-straight year. His 26 points were the most scored at the championships by an individual male athlete since 2005, and he was the first male athlete to repeat as high point scorer since 2009.
Making History
Texas Tech has already had nine individuals combine to break 13 different school records this year, with many of those having been broken twice already. Overall, Tech school records have been broken 24 times in 2015.
Last Year At The NCAA Championships
Senior Red Raider Kennedy Kithuka (5,000m and 10,000m) along with the Lady Raider trio of Hannah Carson (javelin), Le'Tristan Pledger (100H) and Cierra White (200m) were honored as First Team All-Americans after advancing to the finals and finishing in the Top-8 in their respective events.
Meanwhile, Bradley Adkins (High Jump), JaCorian Duffield (High Jump), and members of the Lady Raider 4x400 Relay Team (Amoy Blake, Montene Speight, Tiffany Tarver, and White) were named to the All-America Second Team.
Kithuka finished fourth in the men's 10,000-meter run before going on to finish eighth in the 10,000-meter run just two days later at Hayward Field. He set Texas Tech school records and won Big 12 titles in both events over the season. The Thika, Kenya native is also the first Red Raider in school history to earn All-America First Team honors in either the 5,000 or 10,000 outdoors.
For the Lady Raiders, both White and Pledger are the first female Tech athletes to earn All-America honors in 200-meters and sprint hurdles respectively. Carson became Tech's first female All-America First Team selection in the javelin.
Last Time Out
Texas Tech track & field will send 16 athletes in 12 events to the NCAA Championships, after earning qualifications in six more events on day three of the NCAA West Preliminaries, in Austin, Texas, on Saturday.
Kyle Thompson started the day for the No. 12 Red Raiders in the pole vault. On his second attempt at 5.35m/17-6.50, Thompson, who entered the competition ranked 21st in the region, got over the bar, but brushed it on his way down. The bar jumped off of the standards for a split second, but landed and came to rest, sending Thompson to Eugene.
Paetyn Revell became the 11th Red Raider to punch a ticket to Eugene, as she leaped 12.79m/41-11.5 on her first attempt in the triple jump, good enough to break into the top 12. Revell is the first Lady Raider triple jumper to qualify for NCAA Outdoors since 2005.
Hannah Carson already owns the best 10 javelin marks in Tech history, but she planted a new at the top of the list on Saturday, a launch of 56.56m/185-7, good enough to win the NCAA West Region title by 14 feet. She heads to NCAA Outdoors for the third-straight year.
Inclement weather delayed the running events for a little over an hour, but Tech earned an NCAA qualification in the sprint hurdles from Le'Tristan Pledger, her second NCAA berth of the weekend, with a time of 13.39. She will compete in both the sprint hurdles and the long jump, in Eugene.
Cierra White also earned her second qualification of the weekend as well, running a 23.19 to move on in the 200 meter dash, to go along with yesterday's qualification in the 100 meter dash.
Tech's 4 x 400 meter relay (Joseph Richards III, Kyle Collins, C.J. Jones and Steven Champlin), who already earned indoor All-American honors this season, will look to do the same in the outdoor season, after automatically qualifying with a time of 3:04.15.
Leading the way, as they have all year, were JaCorian Duffield and Bradley Adkins in the high jump. Each cleared 2.20m/7-2.5 to guarantee qualification. However, another Red Raider stole the show. After missing three times at 2.20m/7-2.5, freshman Trey Culver, who had already cleared a personal-best 2.17m/7-1.5, was tied for 12th and entered a jump-off with an athlete from Iowa State, with an NCAA berth on the line.
The jump-off started at 2.20m/7-2.5. After an Iowa State miss, Culver got his second PR of the night, flying over the bar to send the Texas Tech contingent into a frenzy.
Kole Weldon won the West Regional title in the discus, with a huge, season-best throw of 59.78m/196-1 on his final attempt, a throw that won by nearly seven feet. Weldon defeated Texas' Ryan Crouser, who he lost to at Big 12 Outdoors, in the process.
Keeping A Watchful Eye
Texas Tech high jumper JaCorian Duffield has received votes in each of the last four editions of theBowerman Trophy Watch List, as announced by the U.S Track & Field and Cross Country CoachesAssociation (USTFCCCA).
The Bowerman, which debuted in 2009, is presented annually by the USTFCCCA to the most outstanding male and female collegiate track & field athletes in the nation.
Duffield swept the Big 12 and NCAA Indoor high jump championships earlier this year, clearing what was a personal-best 2.29m/7-6.0 at the time to claim the national title over teammate Bradley Adkins and become the third indoor NCAA Champion in Texas Tech history.
At the next meet in which he competed, the Texas Relays, Duffield started his outdoor season with a bang, clearing a personal-best and school-record 2.31m/7-7.0, which at the time was the No. 1 jump in the world, and is still currently the top mark in the NCAA. He followed that up with his first Big 12 outdoor title, last month.
The Big 12's Best
Texas Tech thrower Hannah Carson has been named the Big 12 Outdoor Track & Field Female Performer of the Year.
Carson, fresh off a weekend where she earned the first two Big 12 titles of her career, was voted the winner of this award by the conference's coaches. She becomes the first Lady Raider to win this award, and the second Tech athlete overall to do so, after Kennedy Kithuka won the men's version of the honor, in 2014.
Carson has had an incredible outdoor season for the Lady Raiders. She has won the shot put at fourdifferent meets, the discus at five different meets and the javelin at seven different meets, giving her 16 event titles in 2015, the most recent of those being her Big 12 javelin and discus championships.
Big Time Big 12 Athletes
Texas Tech finished with 10 Big 12 Athlete of the Week awards between the 2015 indoor and outdoor seasons, which is the second highest total by a single team in Big 12 history. Seven different Tech athletes won the award.
Jan. 21 -- Le'Tristan Pledger (Indoor)
Jan. 28 -- Cierra White & JaCorian Duffield (Indoor)
Feb. 11 -- Cierra White (Indoor)
March 25 -- Chris Caldwell (Outdoor)
April 1 -- JaCorian Duffield (Outdoor)
April 8 -- Hannah Carson (Outdoor)
April 15 -- Joseph Richards III (Outdoor)
April 29 -- Kole Weldon & Hannah Carson (Outdoor)
Players Mentioned
