Feb. 3, 2007
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – While the weather outside Notre Dame’s Loftus Sports Center might have been brutally cold on Saturday, the competition inside the facility at the 20th annual Meyo Invitational was white-hot. When the dust settled, participating athletes had rolled up 68 automatic or provisional qualifications for the NCAA Indoor Championships, lifting the meet’s two-day total to 85 NCAA qualifiers. In addition, six Meyo Invitational records and three Meyo Track standards were broken, with three meet marks and one track record tumbling on Saturday.
Throughout the two-decade history of the meet, the marquee event has been the Meyo Mile, and this year was no different. Junior Jake Watson (Stillwater, Minn./Stillwater Area) won the race in a personal-best 4:00.71, not only clocking the third-fastest time in the nation this year, but also the fifth-quickest time in Notre Dame history. Watson led a group of six runners at the top of the Meyo Mile field, all of whom qualified provisionally for the NCAA Championships, with Wisconsin’s Brandon Bethke (4:01.81) and John Bolas (4:01.92) posting top-10 national times this year.
The men’s 3,000-meter run was perhaps the most eagerly anticipated event of the weekend and easily lived up to its billing. Wisconsin’s Chris Solinsky posted the fastest time in the nation this year (7:52.42), qualifying automatically for the NCAA meet and pacing a crew of eight runners who broke eight minutes for the event. The top three runners clocked the three quickest times in the land this year, and the top 13 runners in the field all met NCAA automatic or provisional qualifying standards.
The men’s 800-meter run featured another outstanding effort from Notre Dame senior All-American Thomas Chamney (Tipperary, Ireland/St. Columba’s), who turned in the NCAA’s fastest time this year in a personal-best 1:47.82, missing NCAA automatic qualification by a mere two-hundredths (.02) of a second. Still, Chamney’s time was the second-fastest in Notre Dame history, trailing only Jeff Hojnacki’s time of 1:47.50 at the 1997 Alex Wilson Invitational.
The women’s 800 at the Meyo was just as scintillating, with the top five finishers clocking the five fastest times in the nation this year. Minnesota’s Heather Dorniden benefitted from the blistering pace, winning in 2:04.33 to lead a crew of four NCAA automatic qualifiers atop the field, with the next six runners meeting the NCAA provisional standard.
In the sprints, two NCAA season-best times were posted, as Wisconsin’s Demi Omole set a new Meyo Invitational record (6.55) in the men’s 60-meter dash, while Michigan’s Tiffany Ofili shattered the meet and Meyo Track records in the women’s 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.05 seconds. Both athletes automatically qualified for the NCAA Championships on the basis of their performances Saturday afternoon.
Other notable efforts by Notre Dame athletes on Saturday included: senior Ryan Postel (Lexington, Ky./Lexington Catholic), who ran the 400-meter dash in a season-best 47.47 which is the fifth-fastest time in school history; and senior Cassie Gullickson, who took fourth in the triple jump with a personal-best leap of 12.13 meters (39-9.75) that also goes down as the sixth-best distance on the Notre Dame all-time list.
Not to be overlooked at this weekend’s Meyo Invitational, Irish athletes combined to post 35 new or lowered qualifying marks for the BIG EAST Conference Championships, which are slated to take place Feb. 17-18 at the Akron Athletics Field House in Akron, Ohio.
The Irish will have one final tune-up meet before the BIG EAST Championships, sending a small group of athletes to the Windsor Team Challenge next Saturday, Feb. 10, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada — the one-day competition will get underway at 11 a.m. (ET).
— ND —