Crofford Posts Top-25 5K Time in Fayetteville

Fayetteville, Ark. ? Temperatures in the 70’s with cloudy skies and calm winds welcomed the Nebraska track and field team Friday afternoon to John McDonnell Field on the campus of the University of Arkansas for the two-day John McDonnell Invitational. The opening day of the meet was light for the Huskers, with only the men’s and women’s hammer throwers and 5,000-meter runners competing.

 

With the lights shining down on John McDonnell Field and temperatures dropping into the low 60’s, sophomore Lara Crofford took to the track at 9:25 p.m. to run the 5,000 meters for the first time outdoors this season. Crofford easily took top honors with a regional-qualifying time of 16:28.21, nearly breaking her personal-best time of 16:27.73. Crofford, who ranks No. 8 in D-I in the 10,000 meters with a time of 34:07.55 at the Stanford Invitational, now ranks No. 21 in the D-I in the 5,000 meters. The Newville, Pa., native got into the lead right at the gun and never looked back. After running just ahead of Oral Roberts’ Sheila Ndasym for the first three laps, Crofford started to separate from Ndasym at the 2K mark, and the lead only grew as the race went on. With one mile left to go, Crofford was out all alone, nearly 200 meters ahead of the closest runner. Overall, Crofford lapped seven of the other 11 runners in the field, while finishing over 53 seconds ahead of Ndasym’s second-place time of 17:21.39.

 

Redshirt freshman Todd Gulizia followed Crofford’s performance with a personal-best time of 14:50.04 in the men’s 5K race. Gulizia cut just under three seconds off his previous best time of 14:52.84 to finish ninth in the 25-athlete field.

 

The hammer throwers kicked off the meet at Noon, with the women heading to the ring first. Junior Lisa Minnick led the way, finishing fifth with a toss of 172-9. Samantha Musil also finished in the top 10 with a toss of 164-5. On the men’s side, Brett Suckstorf finished runner up with a toss of 186-3, one inch short of the regional-qualifying standard of 186-4. Eric Petersen and Carter Wasem finished third and fourth, respectively, with tosses of 172-3 and 169-0.

 

With the Huskers making annual trips to Fayetteville during the indoor season, this weekend marks the first time since 1993 that the Huskers have traveled to the Razorbacks’ home turf for an outdoor meet.

After not making a trip to Fayetteville for an outdoor meet in 16 years, the Huskers will travel back to John McDonnell Field in just under two months for the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 10-13.

 

Action is set to pick up again tomorrow bright and early at 9:30 a.m. with the women’s discus, while the running events will not start until Noon with the preliminaries of the women’s 100-meter hurdles. A full recap will be available at Huskers.com following the meet, while live results can also be found at Huskers.com (via FlashResults.com) and a free live video stream is scheduled to be available at ArkansasRazorbacks.com.