Baylor T&F Closing Indoor Season at NCAA Indoor Championships

Thu Mar 13 11:08:16 CDT 2025

                           BAYLOR ATHLETICS COMMUNICATIONS – March 13, 2025

Baylor T&F Closing Indoor Season at NCAA Indoor Championships
Bears sending nine entries, including Brown in long jump and 60 meters
For more information contact: Josie Hutton; 254-709-7720, josie_hutton at baylor.edu<mailto:josie_hutton at baylor.edu>
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Baylor track and field has nine entries competing in the 2025 NCAA Division I Indoor Track and Field National Championships that begin Friday at the Virginia Beach Sports Center.
The two-day meet starts with the men’s heptathlon and women’s pentathlon Friday morning at 8:15 and 8:35 a.m. CT.
Coverage of the meet will be streamed on ESPN+, with live results provided by Flash Results<https://flashresults.ncaa.com/Indoor/2025/index.htm>.
HEADED TO THE BEACH
Earning the most qualifications in the Michael Ford era, Alexis Brown (long jump, 60 meters), Tiriah Kelley (200 meters), Molly Haywood and Tenly Kuhn (pole vault), Demario Prince (60-meter hurdles), Demar Francis (200 meters), Nathaniel Ezekiel (400 meters) all qualified to compete at the indoor nationals, along with the men’s 4x400 relay of Abbas Ali, Dillon Bedell, Francis and Ezekiel.
Ranked third in the nation in the long jump with a program-record leap of 22 feet, 3 ¾ inches, Brown has gone over 22 feet in her last three meets. Baylor’s only athlete to qualify in two individual events, she finished third in the 60 meters at the Big 12 Championships and is tied for eighth in the NCAA with an elevation-adjusted time of 7.16.
A junior from Plano, Texas, who earned All-America honors in the 4x100 relay at the 2024 NCAA Outdoor Championships, Kelley was undefeated in the 200 meters until a third-place finish at the Big 12 meet with an adjusted time of 22.77. She is ranked 11th nationally but only four-hundredths of a second out of the No. 6 spot.
Baylor joins Washington as the only schools sending two pole vaulters to the NCAA Indoor, with Haywood ranked fourth with a school-record mark of 15-1 ½ and Kuhn tying for 11th at 14-7 ½. An outdoor All-American with a fifth-place finish last year, Haywood has qualified for indoor nationals each of the last two years.
The school record-holder in the outdoor 400-meter hurdles and indoor 400 meters, Ezekiel is ranked No. 1 in NCAA and No. 2 in the current world rankings at 44.74. He ran his first sub-45-second time at the Jarvis Scott Invitational and lowered his school and African record again with a first-place finish at the Big 12 Indoor.
A ninth-place finisher in the 60-meter hurdles at the 2024 NCAA Indoor meet, Prince set the school record at last month’s Charlie Thomas Invitational in College Station with a time of 7.57 that is tied for ninth-best in NCAA.
Qualifying in the 200 meters for the third-straight year, Francis was the silver medalist at the Big 12 Indoor meet and ranks seventh nationally with a season-best time of 20.54.
Coming off a first-place showing at the Big 12 Indoor, Baylor’s veteran crew of Francis, Ezekiel and Dillon Bedell is joined by a trio of freshman options Abbas Ali, Tyler Honeyman and Austen Diggs on the 4x400 relay. The Bears go in with the ninth-fastest time (3:04.91) and will run in the same heat with Purdue, which is led by first-year head coach and former Baylor All-American Tony Miller.
LAST TIME OUT
Getting wins from Molly Haywood and Alexis Brown in the pole vault and long jump, respectively, the Baylor women had a third-place finish with 64 points at the Big 12 Indoor Championships, their highest finish since winning the Big 12 indoor title in 2017. On the men’s side, Nathaniel Ezekiel won the open 400 meters with a blistering time of 44.72 and then ran an impressive anchor leg on the 4x400 relay, bringing the Bears from fourth in their heat to a winning and season-best time of 3:04.78. The men got 30 of their 42 points in the 200, 400 and 4x400 relay to place ninth in the team standings.
RECORD BREAKERS
In a record-breaking indoor season, Baylor got program-best marks from Alexis Brown in the 60 meters (7.16) and long jump (22-3 ¾), Tirah Kelly in the 200 meters (22.73) and Molly Haywood in the pole vault (15-1 ½) on the women’s side. Nathaniel Ezekiel broke Matthew Moorer’s two-year-old record in the 400 meters with a 44.92 time at a meet in Lubbock and then shattered his own record with the 44.72 clocking at the Big 12 Championships. Sophomore Demario Prince has rewritten the top-10 list for the 60-meter hurdles and now holds all of the top six marks, including the school-record 7.57. Finishing fourth in each of his first four meets, freshman JL Van Rensburg broke his own school record in finishing fourth at the Big 12 Championships with a 62-6 ½.
RUNNING IN AN ELITE CROWD
Also named the Big 12 Men’s Indoor Performer of the Year, Nathaniel Ezekiel is on the pre-NCAA Indoor Championships Bowerman’s Watch List that was announced March 6 by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. The Bowerman is the highest honor in collegiate track and field. The pre-NCAA Championships list includes the top 10 men and top 10 women. Ezekiel makes his debut on the watch list following the Big 12 Championships, where he set the No. 6 NCAA all-time mark of 44.74 in the 400 meters and also anchored the 4x400 relay to a win. He is the first from the men’s sprint crew since 2015 to be named to the watch list while being the fourth overall Baylor men to be so honored.
POLL POSITION
Baylor is one of 12 schools that have both the men’s and women’s programs ranked in the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Top 25 rankings. The women are at No. 18 nationally and third among Big 12 schools, behind only No. 3 BYU and No. 8 Texas Tech. On the men’s side, the Bears ranked 20th nationally and fourth in the Big 12, behind No. 6 Texas Tech, 10th-ranked Oklahoma State and No. 19 Arizona State.
MIKE ON THE MIC
Baylor head coach Michael Ford<https://baylorbears.com/sports/track-and-field/roster/coaches/michael-ford/2444>
"I thought on the men’s side, we would maybe get one more guy. Laurenz (Colbert), just based off what he did last year. We just didn’t have a great conference meet. On the ladies’ side, I thought we got in pretty much everybody. I think the big thing that we were thinking about was more maybe the (4x400) relay. But I think we’ll be a much better outdoor team on the relay. Overall, I thought the ones who did make it, they’ve been pretty consistent all year. They’ve been in the top 10, top 16, all year. So, looking forward to what they do.”

NCAA MEET SCHEDULE
(Baylor entries)
Friday, March 14
(all times are Central)
1:00 p.m.: Women’s pole vault (Molly Haywood, Tenly Kuhn)
2:30 p.m.: Women’s long jump (Alexis Brown)
2:38 p.m.: Women’s 60 meters prelims (Brown)
4:02 p.m.: Women’s 200 meters prelims (Tiriah Kelley)
6:30 p.m.: Men’s 400 meters prelims (Nathaniel Ezekiel)
7:00 p.m.: Men’s 60-meter hurdles prelims (Demario Prince)
7:32 p.m. Men’s 200-meter prelims (Demar Francis)

Saturday, March 15
2:10 p.m.: Women’s 60 meters final (Brown)
2:50 p.m.: Women’s 200 meters final (Kelley)
5:20 p.m.: Men’s 400 meters final (Ezekiel)
5:40 p.m.: Men’s 60-meter hurdles final (Prince)
6:20 p.m.: Men’s 4x400-meter relay final (Abbas Ali, Dillon Bedell, Francis, Ezekiel)

To stay up to date throughout the year on all things Baylor track and field, follow the team on Facebook, X and Instagram: @BaylorTrack.
 - BaylorBears.com -

Josie Hutton | Associate Director of Athletics Communications (FB, T&F/XC, MTEN)
Department of Athletics | Baylor University
C: (254) 709-7720

[signature_2230589939]<http://www.baylorbears.com/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.baylor.edu/pipermail/bumedia/attachments/20250313/973a5028/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 12353 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://mailman.baylor.edu/pipermail/bumedia/attachments/20250313/973a5028/attachment-0001.png>