SOUTH BEND, Ind. – After anchoring the Lady Tigers to their second school record in the distance medley relay this season, junior Morgan Schuetz returned to the track at the Loftus Sports Center and clocked an 800-meter personal best with the ninth-fastest time in the NCAA to set the pace for LSU’s athletes at Notre Dame’s Alex Wilson Invitational.
Schuetz’s effort was among three performances by the Tigers and Lady Tigers on Saturday to finish among the qualifying positions for the NCAA Championship as Tiger senior Cyril Grayson also cracked the NCAA’s Top 10 rankings while running a nearly half-second indoor personal best in the men’s 400-meter dash.
And of the seven athletes lining up in their individual events after running on LSU’s distance medley relay teams, four set indoor personal bests on what proved to be a fruitful trip to South Bend this weekend.
The Lady Tigers set the tone for the day in their first event for the competition when Schuetz (mile) anchored a distance medley relay team also featuring freshman Hollie Parker (1,200 meters), junior Travia Jones (400 meters) and sophomore Hannah Deworth (800 meters) to a school-record time of 11 minutes, 5.34 seconds for the 12th-fastest performance nationally this season.
LSU’s women had already set the school’s DMR record once this season with a previous best of 11:16.92 run at the Razorback Invitational at the University of Arkansas back on Jan. 29. It was a record that stood for only three weeks as they slashed more than 11 seconds off their previous mark in a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s race.
The Lady Tigers turned in the 12th-fastest time in the country this season to finish behind only fellow NCAA Championship hopefuls Michigan (10:58.25), Notre Dame (11:00.73) and Arkansas (11:05.19).
Finishing the day’s action as the No. 12-ranked women’s distance medley relay in the NCAA this season could prove crucial in a week’s time as only the 12 fastest relay teams in both the 4×400-meter relay and DMR are set to qualify for the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships following a full slate of conference meets to be held across the country next weekend.
Schuetz also took a big step toward NCAA Championship qualification in the 800 meters during Saturday’s competition as she smashed her previous indoor personal best with a run of 2:04.05 for a second-place finish in the women’s invitational final. She trailed only the winning time of 2:03.48 by Oklahoma State’s Savannah Camacho in the race to emerge as the NCAA’s No. 9-ranked performer in the event this season.
Schuetz, who set her previous indoor best of 2:04.53 at the NCAA Championships a year ago, climbed 10 spots up the national rankings and firmly inside the Top 16 NCAA Championship qualifying positions.
She was among three Lady Tigers setting personal bests in the invitational 800 meters during Saturday’s Alex Wilson Invitational as Parker and Deworth both followed their performance in the DMR with career bests of 2:08.46 for ninth place and 2:10.95 for 15th place, respectively. Jones also returned to the track to take third place in the women’s 400-meter final with a time of 53.73.
Grayson carried the torch for the Tigers at Notre Dame as he sprinted to a big indoor personal best of 46.51 in a third-place finish of his own in the men’s 400 meters to climb into the No. 10 spot in the NCAA ranking for the 2016 season. Mississippi State’s Larry Alfred crossed the finish line first in the field in 46.13, followed by unattached athlete Chris Giesting in second place with a time of 46.41.
He also ran the 400-meter leg for the Tigers’ DMR that was just shy of its own school record as he teamed with junior Blair Henderson (1,200 meters), sophomore Jack Wilkes (800 meters) and freshman Dajour Braxton in running 9:35.90 for 12th place overall in the field. They were just a split-second shy of LSU’s 8-year-old school record of 9:35.31 set back in 2008.
Like Schuetz, Henderson later finished runner-up himself in the men’s 800 meters with a near personal best of 1:47.86, while Wilkes followed in 15th place overall with a time of 1:54.13 in the event.
With the LSU Twilight and Alex Wilson Invitational now in the books, the Tigers and Lady Tigers will kick off the championship season with a return trip to Fayetteville, Arkansas, next weekend where they will line up for the 2016 SEC Indoor Track & Field Championships running Feb. 26-27 at the Randal Tyson Track Center. The 2016 indoor season will later come to an end with the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championship to go off March 11-12 at the Birmingham Crossplex in Birmingham, Alabama.