The Central College men’s and women’s track squads came away with five national qualifiers at the Wartburg Select Saturday highlighted by an NCAA automatic qualifying long jump performance by junior Ethan Miller.
            
The Dutch men took fourth place in a five-team field with 123.5 points while St. Thomas won the title with 181 points. The Central women were fifth in a six-team field while host Wartburg took the competition with 226 points.

Miller’s leap of 23 feet, 11.5 inches set a new personal best, won the event, and is Division III’s top mark of the season. Teammate Kurtis Brondyke took third with a jump of 23-0.75, also a provisional qualifying mark, and Shane Hallengren was fifth with an indoor best of 21-10.75.

Meanwhile, Central took four of the top five spots in the shot put led by standout Matt Graber. Graber took top honors with a NCAA provisional qualifying toss of 51-9 and was followed by Tyler Crouse in third (47-3.5), Josh Fleming in fourth (46-4.75), and Phil Miller in fifth (45-4.5). Earlier in the day, Crouse extended his personal best by over two feet in winning the weight throw (55-9.75) with an NCAA provisional mark while Phil Miller was fourth (50-7.25).
            
On the track, Ethan Miller picked up his second victory of the day in the 55-meter hurdles. After equaling his personal best in the preliminary round (7.82 seconds), he won the final in 7.91 seconds. Meanwhile, the 4×200-meter relay team of Kyle Wood, Trevor Veach, Allen Scovel, and Logan Danko scored a come-from-behind victory in a time of 1:31.89.

A record fell on the women’s side as well, as the same squad that broke the women’s 4×200 relay record last year provided an encore.  Felicia Coleman, Emily Teas, Jill Ziskovsky, and Sam Retz snapped their previous mark (1:45.5) by almost a full second en route to a victory in a time of 1:44.7.

Meanwhile, Morgan Darrow scored a victory in the weight throw with a toss of 50-10.75 and also took third in the shot put (41-9.25). Both marks were just shy of the NCAA provisional standards in the respective events.  The women’s 4×400 relay of Coleman, Teas, Retz, and Rachel Purdy was fourth in a loaded field, finishing in 3:58.77 and meeting the NCAA provisional standard.

The Dutch travel to Grinnell next Saturday for the Grinnell Invitational.