BATON ROUGE — The second-ranked LSU men’s track and field team and the seventh-ranked Lady Tigers will be well represented next week at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore., as 23 athletes will make the trip out west head coach Pat Henry learned after declarations were made official late Thursday night.
“This is a pretty indicative group of what we’ve sent to nationals in the past,” said Henry. “The numbers may be up a little bit, but it’s right about what we normally have. We pretty much got in who we thought we would with the exception of one athlete who was on the bubble and did not get in. Because of the high number of automatic qualifiers we had this year we knew what to expect and as a result, that has really helped in our training and preparations leading up to nationals.”
The Tigers will send 11 athletes, while the Lady Tigers will send 12. After winning the NCAA Indoor title in March, the Tigers will now take aim at their first outdoor crown since 1990, while the Lady Tigers enter the meet as the defending NCAA Outdoor champions and winners of 12 of the last 14 titles.
The Tigers bring three national leaders to the mix, as Claston Bernard leads the field in the decathlon, while Walter Davis heads the list of entries in the triple jump and will also compete in the long jump where he currently sits third.
The Tigers 4×400-meter relay team of Robert Parham, Lueroy Colquhoun, Pete Coley and Alleyne Francique leads the nation as well. Francique, Coley and Parham all made the open 400-meter field as well, while Coley and Parham will also team with Devery Henderson and Dwhyte Barrett on the 4×100-meter relay.
Javier Nieto qualified for the third consecutive year in the hammer throw, while Gerald Green and Peter Simon will also make the trip as relay alternates.
On the women’s side, Muna Lee headlines the list of sprinters and ranks in the top five in both the 100 and 200-meter dashes heading into nationals.
She will be joined in the 100-meter field by returning All-American
Sa’Donna Thornton and in the 200-meter field by Myra Combs, Stephanie Durst and Ronetta Smith. Lee, Thornton, Combs and Durst also combine to form the Lady Tigers’ 4×100-meter relay team which heads to Eugene tied with Florida for the national lead in the event. Combs and Durst will join with Smith and Xyllena Lynch to compete in the 4×400-meter relay which qualified as well.
April Sams and Althea Thomas will serve as relay alternates.
Elsewhere on the track, Smith will compete in the open 400-meter dash, while Lolo Jones will compete in the 100-meter hurdles. Susanne Strunz became the Lady Tigers’ first distance qualifier since the 1998 indoor season. Strunz, who will compete in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, will be the first Lady Tiger distance runner to compete at the NCAA Outdoor meet since 1997.
Combs will add a field event to her competition schedule as well, giving her four events on the weekend, as she qualified in the long jump, as did Chenelle Marshall. Bianca Rockett qualified in the triple jump for the third straight year.
The NCAA Championships open on Wednesday and run through Saturday. The meet will be broadcast by CBS and aired on a tape-delayed basis on June 10 from 1-3 p.m. CT.