Jayhawks Open Outdoor Slate with Pair of Road Meets

March 26, 2013

Meet Notes in PDF format

Texas Relays // Emporia Spring Open Dates Wednesday, March 27 -Saturday, March 30 Locations Austin, Texas | Emporia, Kan. Venues Mike A. Myers Stadium Fran Welch Stadium Schedules Texas Relays | Emporia Spring Results Texas Relays | Emporia Spring Twitter KU_Track

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas track & field is set to open up the 2013 outdoor season as they trek to two meets Wednesday through Saturday, splitting up between the 86th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin, Texas and the Emporia Spring Open in Emporia, Kan. A total of 83 Jayhawks will be in action this weekend, each hoping to start their outdoor campaigns on a high note.

KU_TRACK QUICK HITS

• This weekend, KU will send athletes to the Texas Relays in Austin, Texas. Kansas has a total of 11 on its roster who hail from the Lone Star State. Eight on the men’s team and three on the women’s call Texas home.
• The Kansas women enter the 2013 outdoor season ranked No. 1 by the USTFCCCA, marking the highest outdoor rank in the program’s history
• Sophomore Michael Stigler is the KU men’s lone returning First Team All-American after finishing sixth in the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Championships last June
• Senior Andrea Geubelle is coming off a banner indoor campaign which saw her claim both the indoor long jump and triple jump titles, making her just the fourth women in NCAA history to accomplish that feat.
• The KU women return all but one of its seven scorers from the 2012 NCAA Championships and all but three of the 16 that scored at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships a season ago.
• Diamond Dixon comes into the outdoor season as the reigning Big 12 champion in the 400 meters. She also posted a fourth-place finish at the U.S. Olympic Trials last year with a school record time of 50.88. She went on to win an Olympic gold medal as part of Team USA’s 4×400-meter relay team, making her the only collegiate to win gold last year.
• Head coach Stanley Redwine was awarded the Big 12 Women’s Head Coach of the Year for the indoor season, the second conference honor of his 13-year stint at Kansas.
• The women’s 4×400-meter relay team will look to again move to the top of the NCAA this year. Last season, Denesha Morris, Paris Daniels, Taylor Washington and Diamond Dixon posted the best NCAA-qualifying time, running 3:28.10 en route to the Big 12 title in the event.
• A total of 83 of the 99 Jayhawks on the current men’s and women’s roster will be in action this week at either the Texas Relays or the Emporia Spring Open, 37 in Emporia and 46 in Austin.

AN INDOOR SEASON TO REMEMBER
The women’s team’s 2013 indoor season was the best in program history. The team was ranked in the top-five of the NCAA rankings for the entire season and moved to No. 1 for the first time since the current rankings system began in 2008. The team went on to claim its first-ever conference title in late February behind a program best six individual Big 12 champions.

The team saw a program-best 11 qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships and went on to earn its second-consecutive runner-up team finish. Three national titles were won by Jayhawks with Andrea Geubelle winning both the long and triple jumps and Natalia Bartnovskaya claiming the pole vault championships. In all, eight First Team All-America honors were earned by Jayhawks, also a program best.

NUMBER ONE PRESEASON
After claiming its second-consecutive NCAA Indoor runner-up finish two weeks ago, the Kansas women’s track & field team was named the outdoor preseason No. 1-ranked team by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) March 19. The preseason ranking is the highest-ever for the women’s squad during an outdoor season.

The ranking marks the 15th-consecutive week the women’s team has been slotted in the top-five of the NCAA, which includes both indoor and outdoor seasons. KU’s streak is the longest active in the nation.

OUTDOOR RECORD HOLDERS
Eight school records are currently held by active Jayhawks, each of which were broken last season. The women’s squad saw seven of its records broken a year ago, while the men’s team had a 30-year-old record broken in 2012. Below is a list of KU’s current school record holders:

GEUBELLE GOING FOR GOLD
Senior Andrea Geubelle had a great first half to her final campaign in Lawrence. The University Place, Wash., product has collected a litany of accolades during the indoor season that have her among top-collegiate athletes this year. Here are some of her accomplishments thus far:

• USTFCCCA National Field Athlete of the Year.
• First Female since 2003 to win both indoor long jump and triple jump NCAA titles.
• Winning NCAA triple jump mark (46’6″) was second-best indoor mark ever by an American.
• National Indoor Champion in both long jump and triple jump.
• Jayhawks’ top scorer (18 pts.) at the Big 12 Indoor Championships with her victory in the triple jump and runner-up finish in the long jump.
• One of 10 athletes listed on `The Bowerman’ Watch List.
• Has won 12 of the last 14 triple jump competitions versus collegians, including all four this season.
• Moved into top-10 of NCAA all-time triple jump list after breaking her own school record with a leap of 13.91 meters (45-7.75 ft.).
• Broke long jump school record in her win at the Armory Collegiate Invitational with her nation-leading leap of 6.69 meters (21-11.5 ft.).
• Broke Anschutz facility record in the long jump with mark of 6.25 meters (20-6.25 ft.).
• Named the National Female Athlete of the Week by the USTFCCCA Feb. 4.

LONG JUMP LEGENDS?
The KU horizontal jumps have been arguably the most impressive event group thus far in 2013. Seniors Andrea Geubelle and Francine Simpson have each climbed their way to the top of the NCAA’s indoor rankings and all-time KU rankings, sitting at No. 1 and No. 2 in both, respectively. Geubelle claimed the NCAA title in the event at the NCAA Championships, while Simpson finished third. Geubelle and Simpson also now rank No. 1 and No. 2 on the all-time school performance list.

The two combined for 18 points in the long jump at the Big 12 meet last month and will and 16 points at the NCAA Championships.

VETERAN LEADERSHIP
The women’s team will be chalked full of veteran leadership this season as the 2013 roster features 34 upperclassmen, including 13 seniors out of its 45-woman roster. On the flip side, the men’s team is still in the middle of a youth resurgence as 31 Jayhawks are either sophomores or younger on the men’s 55-person roster.

HOME GROWN
Both the men’s and women’s teams in 2013 feature a large batch of home-grown talent as the majority of the athletes on each roster hail from the Sunflower State. Thirty KU men and 16 Jayhawk women call Kansas home, with the next-most prolific state, Missouri, boasting a combined 12 natives.

Kansas also has a handful of international athletes, all on the women’s team. Seniors Francine Simpson and Denesha Morris are both from Jamaica, while senior Alena Krechyk is a native of Belarus. Newcomers Natalia Bartnovskaya and Anastasiya Muchkayev are the newest international additions with Bartnovskaya making the trip from Krasnoyarsk, Russia and Muchkayev a native of Be’er Sheva, Israel.

STANLEY’S SUCCESS
Head coach Stanley Redwine has taken Kansas track & field to a level it hasn’t seen in quite some time during his 12 years at the helm. During Redwine’s tenure, he has seen 73 indoor and outdoor Big 12 Champions, 117 First Team All-Americans and 11 NCAA Champions come through his program at KU.

Redwine’s teams have also collected a combined five top-10 NCAA team finishes, including last year’s indoor runner-up finish for the KU women. On March 6, 2013 he was named the Big 12 Women’s Coach of the Year after leading the team to its first conference title in program history.

UP NEXT
Kansas will continue the early part of it outdoor schedule as the Jayhawks makes their first-ever trip to Tempe, Ariz., and the Sun Angel Classic on April 5-6. Some members of the distance group will also jet to Palo Alto, Calif., as they compete at the Stanford Invitational, also April 5-6.