Baylor Track & Field Readies for NCAA Indoor Championships
WACO, Texas – Baylor track and field is set to compete at the NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships in Birmingham, Ala., on Friday and Saturday at the Birmingham Crossplex.
Ten Bears qualified for the meet including Ackera Nugent, Howard Fields III, Mariah Ayers, Johnny Brackins, Dillon Bedell, Mathew Moorer, Nathaniel Ezekiel, Kavia Francis, Imaobong Uko and Aaliyah Miller.
Jayson Baldridge, Hasani Barr, Demitra Carter and Gontse Morake will join the others as relay substitutes.
“One of the goals this year was to have a bigger representation than we did last year, especially on the men’s side where we only had KC Lightfoot,” said head coach Michael Ford. “Now, you put Johnny Brackins in the long jump and Trey Fields doing the 400, both for their first time. On the women’s side, you have Ackera Nugent coming back as a defending national champion, and Mariah Ayers making her first national championship in an individual race.”
Nugent enters the 60-meter hurdles as the defending national champion and currently holds the No. 4 mark in NCAA competition this year. The sophomore already improved her mark from last year by two-hundredths of a second and broke her own program record twice this year.
Fields III, hot off his Big 12 Championship in the 400 meters, enters the race with the No. 16 seed. Ayers is set to run in the 200-meter dash, qualifying with 23.18 seconds as the No. 14 seed. Brackins is in the national meet his freshman season with a 7.82 mark set in Kentucky the third week of the season.
The men’s 4x400 squad of Bedell, Moorer, Ezekiel and Fields III will take their conference silver-medal winning time of 3:04.06 into the meet as the No. 9 seed.
The women’s 4x400 will feature Francis, Uko and Ayers, with Miller’s spot to be filled by either Carter or Morake, which will be determined closer to race time. The women’s 3:32.77 qualifies as the No. 12 seed.
The championship meet will be streamed on ESPN3 from the Birmingham CrossPlex. ESPNU will re-air the competition Sunday night, March 13. Ticket information, a meet schedule and live results are all available online.
Baylor NCAA Schedule
Friday, March 11
- 4:00 p.m. – Men’s Long Jump (Brackins)
- 4:25 p.m. – Men’s 400m Semifinal (Fields III)
- 7:55 p.m. – Women’s 60m Hurdles Semifinals (Nugent)
- 8:25 p.m. – Women’s 200m Semifinals (Ayers)
Saturday, March 12
- 4:20 p.m. – Men’s 400m Final (Fields III)
- 5:20 p.m. – Men’s 4x400m Relay
- 7:40 p.m. – Women’s 60m Hurdles (Nugent)
- 7:50 p.m. – Women’s 200m Finals (Ayers)
- 8:20 p.m. – Women’s 4x400 Relay