All Six WUSTL Competitors in Action on Friday at NCAA Meet

Greencastle, Ind., March 12, 2010 – The Washington University in St. Louis men’s and women’s indoor track and field teams had all six of their competitors in action at the first day of the 2010 NCAA Division III Track and Field Championships on Friday, March 12, at the James A. Hollensteiner Track on the campus of DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind.

Sophomore Dan Davis highlighted Washington University’s competitors on Friday, running the 55-meter hurdle preliminaries. He went into the NCAA Championship meet with a season-best WUSTL record-breaking time of 7.53, which ranked as the fourth-fastest time posted in NCAA Division III this season.

On Friday, Davis posted a time of 7.58 in the second heat of the preliminaries, which was good enough for him to advance to Saturday afternoon’s final and ranked fifth among the top-eight prelim marks. He has a chance to become the first men’s student-athlete in Washington University history to earn All-America honors in the 55-hurdles.

Junior Ben Harmon qualified for the men’s pentathlon for a second year in a row and was looking to improve on a third-place finish in the event from a year ago. However, he narrowly missed an opportunity to become a two-time All-American in the pentathlon with a ninth-place score of 3,430, which fell just 43 points shy of the eighth-place competitor from Cornell College.

Harmon started the day with the 55-meter hurdles, where he posted a time of 8.51, which ranked 12th out of the 13 pentathlon participants. He jumped to fifth in the field after he cleared a season-best 6.96 meters in the long jump, which was good for 670 points, but fell back to 11th following the shot put.

Harmon cleared 1.93 meters in the high jump, ranking fifth overall, but that was not enough to pull him out of 11th place in the standings. Harmon ended his day with a 2:47.74 time in the 1,000-meter run, which added 789 points to his tally and improved his standing to ninth.

Washington University also competed in the women’s distance medley relay, where the Bears finished 11th with a time of 12:17.77. It was a disappointing finish for Washington U. who was poised to have its third-straight All-America DMR team after qualifying for the NCAA Championships with a school-record breaking time of 11:55.31.

Junior Sangeeta Hardy had the baton knocked out of her hand 20 meters into the race, the 1,200-meter portion of the event, and the team of junior Kelli Blake, sophomore Erica Jackey and sophomore Liz Phillips were never able to recover from that point.

Davis will compete in the 55-meter hurdles finals during the final day of competition at the 2010 NCAA Division III Track and Field Championships on Saturday, March 13, in Greencastle, Ind. The men’s 55-hurdle final is tentatively scheduled for 2:25 p.m. (ET).