In a repeat from the indoor season, the EMU women have picked up two spots to the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Hannah Chappell-Dick (Bluffton, Ohio/Bluffton) and Kat Lehman (Dover, Ohio/Dover) are heading to the national meet, which is a three-day event starting this Thursday in Canton, N.Y.
Before the indoor meet in March, it had been 10 years since Eastern Mennonite had sent two women in the same year to the national meet.
Similar to what she did two months ago, Chappell-Dick again qualified in two events, the 800m and the 1500m, but she elected to concentrate on the 1500m and pass up a spot in the other event. She choose the mile over the 800m at the indoor meet and ended up with the silver medal and All-American status from that effort.
Chappell-Dick enters the national meet as the No. 8 seed, claiming an ODAC-record top time of 4:30.97 from the Duke Twilight on May 6. The preliminaries of the 1500m will be run at 3:45pm Thursday afternoon, with the top four from each of the two heats along with the next top four runners advancing. The 12-woman finals are set for Saturday at 1:30pm, with the top eight finishers earning All-American status.
Chappell-Dick did have the No. 4 time nationally in the 800m (2:09.37) but will concentrate on the 1500m. She participated in the 800m in the national outdoor meet last year.
Lehman punched her ticket in the 5000m, where she will be seeded No. 17 with her time of 17:08.75 from the Colonial Relays on April 3. She is one of just two freshmen in the field of 22 women in the event. Lehman enters nationals with an interesting dynamic, as she has not run competitively since the ODAC Championships on April 17 and 18 while she studied in Hawaii on a three-week cross-cultural program.
The 5000m has just one race, scheduled for 4:05pm on Saturday.
Both women have also been to the nationals in cross country, with Lehman going this past fall and Chappell-Dick doing it as a sophomore in 2013.
Men’s hurdler Connor Faint (Winchester, Va./Millbrook) just missed qualifying for nationals in the 400m hurdles. With his best time of 53.45, the freshman had been No. 18 in the nation heading into the final week of last chance meets, but he was passed by a handful of other men and ended No. 25. Only the top 20 finishers go to the national meet on the men’s side. Faint was just 0.11 second off of the final qualifying time of 53.34.