Will Daniels ’19 and Kurtis Brondyke ’11 will be in the men’s decathlon field this weekend at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Track and Field Trials, vying for a spot at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics later this summer. The U.S. Olympic Team Trials will take place Friday, June 18 to Sunday July 27 at legendary Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

Daniels, who has spent the last two seasons competing for the University of Iowa after graduating from Central, qualified 15th of 18 competitors with a score of 7,864 points. That career-best effort came in a Hawkeye uniform during the 2021 Big Ten Outdoor Track and Field Championships where he finished second. He also earned All-America honors at the NCAA Division I Track and Field Championships this spring by finishing seventh with 7,635 points.

At Central, Daniels earned All-American status four times and won three national championships. He won the NCAA Division III decathlon title in 2019 and won the heptathlon crown in 2018 and 2019. In six conference championship meets for the Dutch, he finished in the top three of individual events 16 times.

Brondyke took the final spot in the 18-man field, qualifying with 7,785 points. That score is from the 2019 U.S. Championships where he placed seventh. In his first appearance at the Olympic Trials in 2016, Brondyke finished 11th with 7,614 points.

During his four years at Central, Brondyke earned NCAA Division III All-American honors four times and was a national champion at the indoor meet in 2011 in the pentathlon. He finished fifth in the decathlon in 2009 and 2010 and was the runner-up 2011. Brondyke is now an assistant coach at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.

The top qualifier in the field is Garrett Scantling, a former national champion at the University of Georgia who spent time with the Atlanta Falcons organization and has an entry seed of 8,476 points. Zach Ziemek, the 2016 Rio Olympics bronze medalist, is also in the field and has a seed of 8,344 points.

The decathlon starts at 1 p.m. on Saturday with the 100-meter dash and concludes with the 1,500-meter run Sunday at 7:23 p.m.