AMES, Iowa — LSU’s Pete Coley blazed by the competition at the Iowa State Last Chance Meet Saturday recording a time of 46.02 in the 400 meters to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., next week.
Coley’s time is the fastest by a Tiger quarter-miler this season and currently ranks as the nation’s fourth-best mark in the event this season.
LSU has automatically qualified 10 athletes and two relay teams into the indoor national championships to be run next Friday and Saturday, March 14-15.
Also improving upon their season best marks at the ISU meet were Marlon Greensword and Neisha Bernard-Thomas in the 800 meters. Greensword clocked a time of 1:51.21 in the half-mile race to improve upon his previous season-best effort by more than two seconds.
Bernard-Thomas’ time of 2:06.63 just missed the NCAA automatic standard of 2:06.20, but may still be enough to get her into the NCAA Championships, as the time currently ranks as the 15th-fastest in the nation.
Althea Thomas also ran in the women’s 800-meter race. She turned in a time of 2:13.13 to place 15th.
The top-ranked Lady Tigers and the fifth-ranked Tigers return to action next week, when they close out the 2003 indoor season at the NCAA Championships.