Baylor T&F Headed to Boston for NCAA Indoor Championships

[Pirtle, Colin]

BAYLOR ATHLETICS COMMUNICATIONS – March 7, 2024


Baylor T&F Headed to Boston for NCAA Indoor Championships

Seven Bears begin action Friday afternoon

For more information contact: Colin Pirtle; 940-564-0351, colin_pirtle1 at baylor.edu<mailto:colin_pirtle1 at baylor.edu>


BOSTON – Baylor track and field is bound for Boston, Mass., to close out the regular season at the 2024 NCAA DI Indoor Track and Field National Championships. The meet is scheduled to begin on Thursday with the men’s and women’s weight throw competition, and the first Bear is set to compete on Friday at 3:30 p.m. CT.



Coverage of the entire meet will be streamed on ESPN+<https://www.espn.com/espnplus/catalog/74d54e57-c7e6-38fd-9fe8-b98414ad0ea9/ncaa-track-field#bucketId=2>, with live results provided by Flash Results<https://flashresults.ncaa.com/Indoor/2024/index.htm>. Tickets for the event have already sold out.



BEARS TO BOSTON

Earning the most qualifications in the Ford era and tying the third-most in the last 10 years, Alexis Brown (long jump), Laurenz Colbert (200 meters), Nathaniel Ezekiel (400 meters), Demar Francis (200 meters), Molly Haywood (pole vault), Alencia Lentz (pole vault) and Demario Prince (60-meter hurdles) all qualified to compete at the indoor national championship.



The Big 12 women’s long jump silver medalist, Brown is ranked as the No. 4 jumper in the nation behind her personal-best and program-record mark of 21-6 ¼. She is still the only Bear to jump over 21 feet indoors and scored a total of 13 points for the Bears across the long jump and 60-meter dash.



Colbert qualifies for his first indoor championship meet in the 200 meters, putting up a season-best 20.87 that was calculated to 20.63 with the altitude in Lubbock that ranks him at 12th in the nation. The junior narrowly missed qualifying in the 60 meters by three-hundredths of a second.



Ezekiel is making his third-straight trek to indoor nationals for the second-straight year in the 400 meters. The junior Nigerian is already a five-time All-American and took sixth place in the quarter mile final that featured three Bears in the 2023 NCAA meet before finishing fifth as part of the 4x400-meter relay. He enters the 2024 edition of the indoor championships as the ninth seed with a personal-best mark of 45.54 seconds.



In his second year in Waco after transferring from South Dakota, Francis is back in his second-straight 200-meter national semifinal. The senior lowered his own Jamaican national indoor record at the Big 12 Championship with a new personal-best mark of 20.42 seconds that put him ninth in the NCAA this season.



Haywood, one of three freshmen lacing up for the Bears at nationals, makes it in with the 11th-ranked height in the country of 14-5 ¼. Clearing that bar at the Corky Classic, Haywood stands as the fourth-best indoor vaulter in program history after one season.



Baylor’s lone Big 12 event champion from last weekend’s championship meet, Lentz is the second-highest ranked freshman in the country in the women’s pole vault at No. 4. Her 14-9 not only won the conference title but also set the meet record and tied the program record set in College Station during the 2020 season by Tuesdi Tidwell. She joined Tidwell and Annie Rhodes as the third Bear to win the indoor conference title.



Prince, the third and final freshman headed to Boston, qualifies to the meet in the 60-meter hurdles as the only freshman in the field of 16. The Jamaican set the program record with two identical races in the preliminary and final conference championship rounds, at 7.62 seconds and is ranked 11th in the country after the altitude conversion that pushed his mark to 7.64.



LAST TIME OUT

The Bears competed at the Big 12 Indoor Championships in Lubbock on Feb. 23-24. The women finished 5th and the men finished 10th in the team standings. Freshman Alencia Lentz was the lone Big 12 Champion from BU, winning the pole vault competition with a program record-tying and meet record-setting mark of 14-9. In all, 19 entries earned All-Big 12 honors across the meet, with one champion, one runner-up and two bronze medals.



RECORD BREAKERS

Gary Moore Jr. (weight throw), Alexis Brown (long jump), Alencia Lentz (pole vault) and Demario Prince (60m hurdles) set program records during the 2024 indoor season. Moore Jr., Prince and Lentz hit new top marks at the Big 12 Championships, with Moore Jr.’s 68-9.75 attempt in the weight throw, Prince’s 7.62-second marks in the preliminary and final rounds and Lentz’s 14-9 that tied Tuesdi Tidwell’s record from 2020. In Clemson’s Tiger Paw Invitational, Brown improved her PB and put another new long jump record in the books, the second of the year, going 21-6.25. Junior Nathaniel Ezekiel also broke the collegiate 600-yard record in 1:04.44 at the Corky Classic, the first Bear in just under three years (KC Lightfoot, 2021, pole vault) to sit atop the national list.



CROWN THE PRINCE

Demario Prince was named Big 12 Outstanding Freshman of the Year for the 2024 indoor season last week. Posting five marks in the program’s top 10, Prince is the lone freshman in the men's and women's 60-meter hurdle fields. He secured the 11th-best time in the nation with his dual 7.62-second races, adjusted to 7.64 due to altitude, at the Big 12 Championships. He is the eighth Bear to win the honor and shares the 2024 award with Oklahoma State's Denis Kipngetich.



TOP 2(00), NOT 2

The Baylor men’s 200-meter group of Demar Francis, Laurenz Colbert, Kamden Jackson and De’montray Callis are ranked first among 200-meter schools across the nation. With an average time of 20.75 seconds, the quartet sits first and edges out Florida and Texas Tech, who find second and third in the list with 20.77 averages. Event Squad rankings from USTFCCCA place a rank order to a program's "squad" of athletes in a particular event, using the cumulative season-best qualifying marks from a team's top-four ranked athletes on the national list.



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 -


_________________________________________

Colin Pirtle | Associate Director of Athletics Communications (T&F/XC, MTEN, FB)

Department of Athletics | Baylor University

C: 940-564-0351



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



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.baylor.edu/pipermail/localmedia/attachments/20240307/3761593f/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 10334 bytes
Desc: Image.png
URL: <http://mailman.baylor.edu/pipermail/localmedia/attachments/20240307/3761593f/attachment-0001.png>