Senior Sharla Manuele and junior Cam Levins will compete in the NCAA Indoor Track National Championships Friday and Saturday in Fayetteville, Ark., while the track teams travel to San Diego State University for the next outdoor meet.
Manuele, who sits ninth in the country, is the first female athlete from SUU to qualify for nationals in indoor track, while Levins, who sits 12th in the country, is the fourth male athlete from the track and cross country teams to qualify for nationals since T-Bird head coach Eric Houle has been coaching at SUU, Houle said.
Levins was informed at about 8 p.m. Monday night that with his 3:59-mile time he qualified for nationals after not qualifying at Washington last weekend.
“I was very excited,” he said. “We were supposed to find out at 5 (p.m.) but it took three hours for them to finally get it out.”
Levins said he has been doing faster workouts to prepare for the championships, which he believes will help him with a faster time this weekend.
The two-day competition will begin with preliminaries on Friday and the final heats will be on Saturday.
Levins said his goal is to make it to finals and go from there.
He said after not running his best in Washington he’d lost hope of making nationals, but he said he was excited when he was told he could still make it.
“I wasn’t sure I’d still make it then it became more and more of a big surprise that I made it,” Levins said. “I didn’t expect it.”
With this being Levins’ junior year he said he hopes he can get faster and have a great last year next season also.
Houle, who will travel with Manuele and Levins to nationals, said seeing the two athletes make nationals is what any coach might hope to experience.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “It will be great for the university.”
Houle said Levins and Manuele will have the opportunity to run with the best runners in the nation and learn a lot from the competition.
He said he hopes they will hold on and make it to the final heat and go on to become All-Americans.
“(Manuele) and (Levins) are nine and eight seconds off winning the national title,” Houle said.
He said the real satisfaction he thinks for the two athletes is the fact they made it to nationals.
The men’s and women’s track teams will travel to SDSU on Friday and Saturday , where the weather will be warmer and have the opportunity for “some real good performances compared to other meets,” Houle said.
He also said the team is preparing to face off at Stanford the next weekend, which he says should be tough competition.
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