EMU track & field athletes Connor Faint (Winchester, Va./Millbrook) and Grant Amoateng (Bristow, Va./Patriot) have each earned a repeat trip to the NCAA National Championships. Both have also landed on the All-South/Southeast Region Team, as named by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA).
To be named All-Region, an athlete must be ranked in the top-5 of an individual event in the region according to the final TFRRS data.
Last year, the duo helped the Royals send multiple men to the NCAA meet for the first time in more than a decade, and Faint became the first Eastern Mennonite male to earn All-America honors in outdoor track & field since 2005.
Now both men have qualified again and have their sights set on even higher finishes.
The national meet is next week Thursday through Saturday at Roger Harring Stadium in La Crosse, Wisc. The meet is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Click here to see the official meet home page.
Faint is the No. 4 seed in the 400m hurdles with a time of 51.89 seconds. The senior broke his own EMU record with the time set at the Montreat College Invitational on March 30. Peter Girardi of St. John Fisher owns the nation’s top time at 50.95.
As a junior, Amoateng is No. 12 in the triple jump, landing his PR of 14.71m (48ft-3.25in) at the George Mason Spring Invitational on April 14. For the second straight year, sophomore Luther Newburn of Benedictine (Ill.) had the best jump in the nation during the season at 15.57m (51ft-1.0in).
The preliminaries for Faint in the 400m hurdles are Thursday at 4:00pm, with the finals Saturday at 3:00pm. Amoateng will wait until Saturday for the triple jump, with the event starting at 3:15pm.
All times are listed here as Eastern, although the meet itself and therefore all Championship websites will show the Central Time Zone.
This is the second trip to Nationals for each of the men. Faint finished eighth in the 400m hurdles last spring to earn All-America honors, while Amoateng came in 13th in the triple jump. The top 20 men in each event qualify for the National Championships, and the top eight finishers at the meet will be named All-America.
Click here to see the entire list of accepted entries.
Click here to see the entire list of USTFCCCA All-Region honorees.