Three Broncos took home NCAA Division II provisional marks last weekend at the Distance Carnival held at Occidental College and the Ben Brown Invitational at Cal State Fullerton.
The first athlete to hit a provisional mark was senior Casey Monoszlay who placed third overall in the women’s 1,500-meter race, with a time of 4 minutes 31.74 seconds.
Monoszlay is the first athlete on the women’s team to hit a provisional mark.
A provisional mark means an athlete is in contention to qualify for the national championship.
The only way to secure a place at nationals is to hit an automatic qualifying mark.
Senior Ruben Dominguez placed fifth in the 5,000-meter race, hitting a provisional mark with a time of 14:27.29.
The one provisional mark hit at the Ben Brown Invitational was by junior Aaron Guerra-Garcia who placed 17th in the men’s hammer with a throw of 55.85 meters.
On Friday, junior Nia Vance made a strong statement on the track and in the sand as she placed in three events at Fullerton.
Vance placed first in women’s long jump, leaping 5.51 meters, and second in the 100-meter hurdles, crossing the line in 14.43 seconds.
Vance was part of the women’s 4×100-meter team that finished first with a time of 47.30 seconds with teammates sophomore Zaria Francis, sophomore Ryanne Napoleon and freshman Ayana Fields.
This was only the second time the team has raced together and they improved their time.
“We are all really new to each other. We have to have chemistry for hand-offs and be in sync with each other when we run,” Francis said.
“This is something we have really been working on at practice and it has really been showing on the track.”
Francis also finished fifth out of 26 athletes in the women’s 200-meter dash with a time of 25.86 seconds.
The men’s 4×100-meter team that included freshman Kyle Johnston, junior Kenneth Hamel, junior William Pritchard and freshman Rahmie Sharif placed fourth overall with a time of 42.23, two seconds behind the winning team from West Point.
The women’s 4×400-meter relay team placed second with a time of 3:58.56.
The team consisted of Fields, Francis, Napoleon and junior Charisma Byrd.
“That was an intense race. Especially for us because it was really cold at this point, it felt like 40 degrees,” Francis said.
Freshmen Miracle Maseuli, Ashley McBean and Ana Tovi all set two personal records each.
In women’s shot put, Tovi placed fifth with a throw of 12.62 meters.
Maseuli placed eighth with an 11.70-meter toss. McBean placed 15th of out 25 throwers with a throw of 10.37 meters.
In discus, Tovi placed eighth and threw 43.81 meters and Maseuli placed 10th out of 26 and threw 40.01 meters.
For the men’s discus, junior Ryan Peacock placed eighth with a throw 47.87 meters, just ahead of junior Gerardo Flores who threw 46.77 meters and placed ninth. Freshman Aaron May placed 15th out of 25 athletes and threw 43.79 meters.
Cal Poly Pomona will compete at the UC Irvine Collegiate Classic on Friday and Saturday.