Huskers Open NCAA Indoor Championships on Friday

The No. 11 men’s and No. 14 women’s Nebraska track and field teams are set to open at the 2010 NCAA Championships on Friday, March 12 in Fayetteville, Ark., at the Randal Tyson Track Center. The Huskers will have 14 athletes competing at the two-day meet, with six Huskers making their first appearance at the indoor championships.

 

The meet is set to start on Friday, March 12 at 10 a.m. and will continue on Saturday, March 13 at 11 a.m. ESPN360.com will be providing a free live feed of the meet beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday and 6:10 p.m. on Saturday. NCAA.com will stream supplemental coverage as available when ESPN360.com is not live. Additionally, ESPN2 will air a 90-minute show at 12:30 p.m. (Central) on Wednesday, March 17.

 

Bullock Back for No. 4

Senior Epley Bullock will look to make Husker history this weekend, as the Allen, Texas, native will have a chance to become the first Husker on the women’s side in school history to earn four All-America honors in the indoor high jump.

 

Last season, Bullock joined Chris Hall (1991-93) as the only Huskers to achieve the feat three times.

 

Third Shot for Hamilton

An NCAA indoor and outdoor qualifier in the high jump during his first two seasons at Nebraska, Paul Hamilton is still in search of his first All-America honor. A two-time Big 12 champion, Hamilton will enter his third NCAA Indoor Championships this weekend tied for the top collegiate jump in the country this season at 7-5.

 

Gordon Goes for Two

After winning just the second indoor long jump national title in school history on the men’s side in 2009, Nicholas Gordon will look to become the first Husker ever to win back-to-back titles in the event.

 

Carl Myerscough and Ineta Radevica were the last Huskers to win back-to-back NCAA titles, as Radevica took the outdoor triple jump and Myerscough the outdoor shot put, both in 2003 and 2004. Myerscough was also the last Husker to win back-to-back indoor national titles, winning the shot put in 2003 and 2003.

 

Jumps-U

The Nebraska track and field team has always been a premier program for jumpers to develop, and this year is no different. Eight of NU’s jumpers (high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump) will compete this weekend at the NCAA Indoor Championships. The Husker women have four entries at the meet, which ties them with Clemson for the most on the women’s side. On the men’s side, NU is tied with six other schools for the most entries in the jumping events with four.

 

Sensational Swede

After making school history last season by becoming the first Husker to earn All-America honors in the heptathlon with a school-record score of 5,795, Bjorn Barrefors will look to add another honor this season. A third-place finisher in 2009 as a true freshman, Barrefors enters the 2010 meet ranked sixth.

 

Full Trip

The Nebraska jersey will be seen quite often on the track this weekend in Fayetteville as both the Husker men and women rank in the top 10 among participants at the national championships. The women’s seven athletes are tied for the eighth-most entries in the NCAA field with Florida and Penn State. The men’s seven entries tie them for the ninth-most in the meet with Florida State, Oklahoma and Texas Tech.

 

Pentathlon Pair

The duo of Chantae McMillan and Megan Wheatley will have a shot at Husker history this weekend if each can repeat as an All-American in the pentathlon. If successful, it would be the first time in school history on the men’s or women’s side that the Huskers have had two athletes of the same gender earn All-America honors in back-to-back seasons in the combined events at the indoor championships. McMillan and Wheatley have combined to win the past two Big 12 pentathlon titles and enter the meet ranked No. 3 and No. 13, respectively, in the country.

 

Home for Hurdlers

For the second straight season the Huskers will be represented by two hurdlers in the men’s 60-meter hurdles at the NCAA Indoor Championships. After Lehann Fourie and Kirkland Thornton competed last season, Fourie will pair with Tyrell Ross this weekend.  NU is one of four schools in the country to have two hurdlers in the meet, joining fellow Big 12 schools Oklahoma and Texas Tech, as well as South Carolina of the SEC.

 

Pepin back for 30th Season

The all-time winningest track and field coach in the history of the Big 12 and the former Big Eight Conference, Nebraska Head Coach Gary Pepin is coaching his historic 30th season at NU. The longest tenured active coach in Cornhusker athletics, Pepin  is in his 27th season as head coach of both the Husker men’s and women’s teams.

 

Last season, Pepin passed Frank Sevigne as the longest-tenured head coach in the history of the Nebraska program, and Pepin is still at the top of his game for coaching athletes to the highest levels of competition. He was named 2009 Big 12 Men’s Outdoor Coach of the Year, 2009 USTFCCCA Midwest Regional Men’s Outdoor Head Coach of the Year and was recently named 2010 USTFCCCA Midwest Regional Women’s Indoor Head Coach of the Year.

 

Atop the Conference

After winning 51 Big Eight titles during the conference’s history from 1974-1996, the Huskers have continued to dominate since moving to the Big 12 Conference for the 1997 season. NU has won a league-high 21 team titles over the Big 12’s first 14 years, including the program’s historic 100th conference team title last season at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships, where the men’s team won in dominant fashion with four individual conference champions.

 

17 Decades and Counting

The wealth of coaching knowledge at Nebraska is nearly unmatched as the Husker coaching staff holds a combined 170 years of coaching experience.

 

Stability has been key to the success of the track team as four of Head Coach Gary Pepin’s assistants have been with the program for 10 or more years and two for 20 years or longer, including Jay Dirksen (27th season), Mark Colligan (24th season), Billy Maxwell (15th season) and Matt Martin (14th season).