Kurgat, Kelati Lead Lobos to Open NCAA Indoors
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Ednah Kurgat and Weini Kelati both raced to All-American status in the women’s 5,000-meter run as the University of New Mexico track & field team opened competition at the 2018 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field Championships.
The Lobos, led by the 5K performances of national runner-up Kurgat and fifth-place Kelati, registered a number of solid marks on Friday at Gilliam Indoor Stadium, as they also earned top-10 finishes from Alice Wright and its women’s distance medley relay team.
New Mexico, who sent four individuals and two relay team to the NCAAs, finished the first day of the two-day championships in third place on the women’s side with 12 team points.
Kurgat and Kelati contributed all of the eighth-ranked women’s points on Friday as they both placed top eight in the race to score for the Lobos.
Kurgat finished the 25-lap race in second with a time 15 minutes, 47.46 seconds, tallying the best finish in program history in the women’s 5000. Kelati also surpassed the women’s team’s previous best finish in the event, taking in fifth place with a time of 15:56.73.
The tandem ran the beginning of the race near the middle of the 16-athlete field, with Kurgat and Kelati moving up their finishing positions about halfway through the race. The both held on during a frenetic last 400 meters, eclipsing Sarah Waldron’s former program-best finish of eighth place set in 2012.
Kurgat’s and Kelat’s times rank as the fourth- and seventh-best times, respectively, in program history.
Alice Wright also came close to scoring as she registered her second-straight ninth-place finish. In her first race since running her championship-qualifying time in December, Wright logged a time of 16:07.66.
That time ranks as the 10th-best clocking in UNM annals.
Josh Kerr also has a productive start to the meet in the mile preliminary round as he started his title defense strongly. The reigning NCAA mile champion, Kerr took first place in the prelims with a time of 4:02.03.
Kerr spent most of the race comfortably off the shoulder of Ole Miss’s Sean Tobin, content to let Tobin do the work of leading the group. Kerr eventually moved to the front the eight-athlete race on the bell lap to finish with the victory at the line.
He won the closely contested heat by 0.03 seconds, but it was enough to capture the top-four finish needed to automatically qualify to the finals.
Kerr becomes the first Lobo man to advance to back-to-back NCAA mile finals since Lee Emanuel won back-to-back NCAA mile titles in 2009 and 2010. Emanuel is also the last athlete in the NCAA to win consecutive mile crowns.
The Lobos’ distance medley relay teams also raced on Friday, with the women’s squad posting a top-10 finish.
The quartet of Kieran Casey, Shalom Keller, Alondra Negrón Texidor and Charlotte Prouse teamed up for a time of 11:13.21, finishing in 10th place.
Casey led off in the 1200-meter leg with a split of 3:24.43, with Keller notching a strong split of 55.59 in the 400-meter leg. Negrón Texidor chipped in a superb 2:06.94 split in the 800-meter leg, while Prouse brought the team home in the 1600-meter leg with a 4:46.26 split.
The squad’s time is the fourth-best in program history and the best by the team at an NCAA Championship.
In the men’s DMR, the team of Ian Crowe-Wright, Carlos Salcido, Michael Wilson and Kerr finished in 12th place with a time of 9:55.11.
Crowe-Wright opened with a 2:58.18 leg, followed by Salcido’s race-best 46.71 split on the 400-meter leg. Wilson added a 1:49.94 clocking on the 800-meter, while Kerr ran a time of 4:20.30 on the 1600-meter anchor leg.
New Mexico will conclude action at the NCAA Championships on Saturday Kerr in the mile finals at 3:10 p.m. MT and Kurgat and Kelati in the finals of the women’s 3000 at 5:25 p.m. MT
Live results will be available on FlashResults.com and the meet will be streamed live on ESPN3 starting at 3 p.m. MT.
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