Setting the highest mark in the nation this season, junior Scott Sellers cleared a height of 7-5.00 in the high jump.
Scott’s performance gave the Wildcats their only event victory in this weekend’s Iowa State Classic in Ames, Iowa.
His jump marked the third time this season he has met the NCAA automatic qualifying mark. Despite Sellers’s success, track coach Cliff Rovelto said he thinks Sellers can still jump higher.
“He is performing at a high level physically,” Rovelto said. “Technically, there are still some things that can be better. When we get all that worked out, he is going to jump real high.”
Senior Morgan Bonds became the seventh athlete from the women’s team to reach an NCAA provisional qualifying mark. She reached the mark in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:07.36, which was good enough for fourth place. The time was the second fastest of her career. Rovelto said Bonds’ success in achieving the provisional qualifying mark shows how well she has been practicing.
“She ran well,” Rovelto said. “If you look at times throughout the year, it is indicative of where you are in training.”
Also reaching a provisional qualifying mark for the Wildcats was senior Donniece Parrish. Parrish reached the qualifying mark in the 400-meter dash for the second time this year when she posted a time of 54.24.
Parrish and Bonds teamed up with senior Marnyka Honeycutt and freshman TiAra Walpool in the 4×400-meter relay and posted a season-best time of 3:43.21.
Rovelto said Parrish ran very well in both events. Part of the reason for her success in the event recently is the fact that she accepted that she is capable of running the 400-meter dash, he said. She has traditionally run shorter sprints for the Wildcats.
“She hasn’t had a lot of meets where she has run more than one 400 in a day,” Rovelto said. “In fact, I can count them on one hand up to this point in her career. The good thing is not just that she is running fast, but she is handling multiple races at a very high level.”
The Classic was the last time the Wildcats will compete, other than Saturday’s KSU Open Invitational before the Big 12 Conference Championships on Feb. 29 in Lincoln, Neb. Rovelto said the meet was a good measure of the Wildcats’ capability to perform in the conference meet.
“What it confirmed is who the players are on the team,” Rovelto said.