Oregon State
NCAA Championships - Preliminary Round
Gomez Narrowly Misses Trip To 10K Finals
May 30, 2014 | Women's Track & Field
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Kinsey Gomez narrowly missed out on her first trip to the NCAA Championships on Thursday night, finishing 13th in the women's 10,000m at the NCAA West Preliminaries in Fayetteville, Ark. with a time of 34:41.41.
Athletes who ranked among the top 48 in their respective event earned berths into the NCAA West Preliminary Round and Gomez came into the race seeded 34th in the 10K. Those with the top 12 times or marks qualified for the NCAA Championships, held from June 11-14 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore. Her 13th-place finish at John McDonnell Field on the Razorbacks' campus was about eight seconds behind Rice's Cali Roper, who came in 12th with a time of 34:33.16.
“They went out pretty slow and there was a big pack for quite a while,” Oregon State assistant coach Laura Harmon said. “It started to string out a bit two miles in. There was a pack of about 14 and Kinsey started moving up, got one, then got another.”
With about 600m to go, Rice's Roper was able to stave off Gomez's charge. The Beaver junior ran an impressive final lap of between 1:13 and 1:14 and eclipsed both expectations and other talented runners, finishing 21 spots ahead of where she was seeded entering the race.
“Kinsey ran brilliantly,” Harmon added. “It was the best race she could have run tonight. She beat a lot of All-Americans and some really talented women. You have to start to look at yourself in a different light when you start to run with women like that. Yes, she was one spot out of going to finals, but if you put it in perspective, she's in the top 30 in country which is pretty amazing.”
The race was the junior's second-ever at the grueling distance. Gomez ran a school-record 34:37.80 in her only other 10K race at the Mt. SAC Relays on April 17, a time which qualified her for Thursday's West Preliminary Championships. This was her second consecutive trip to the NCAA postseason. She ran the 5K at the same event in Austin, Texas last year where she finished 19th in her heat and 42nd overall (17:17.54). Gomez is in the top four at OSU all-time in the 1,500m (4:26.89; 4th), 3,000m (9:49.17; 3rd), 5,000m (16:24.17; 2nd) and 10,000m (34:37.80; 1st).
Gomez's night was the latest in a string of close calls for the Oregon State track and field squad. At the Pac-12 Championships in mid-May, redshirt freshman Morgan Anderson ran 4:28.37 in the 1,500m and finished just five hundredths of a second behind 12th place and a spot in the finals. On the same day, Taylor Nowlin, who overcame a troublesome injury that forced her to miss two weeks of training prior to the meet, ran a 10:54.07 steeplechase to finish ninth and just behind the top eight scorers.
In terms of NCAA West Preliminary Championship qualifiers, Anderson's 4:25.82 1,500m from the Oregon Twilight on May 9, the third-best time in school history, was just one place and two hundredths of a second away from qualifying for this weekend's festivities in Arkansas. Kelsi Schaer, who ran her 800m at the Pac-12 Championships in 2:09.90, also third on OSU's all-time list, sat just seventh tenths of a second away from a spot in Fayetteville.
Teammates Melissa Ausman and Michele Turney will compete tomorrow, as they make their NCAA West Preliminary Championships debuts. Ausman will be in the women's discus competition beginning at 3 p.m. CT/1 p.m. PT and Turney will be in the women's triple jump at 5 p.m. CT/3 p.m. PT.
Ausman's school-record discus mark of 168' from the OSU High Performance Meet on May 2 is seeded 42nd in the west, eighth in the nation among freshmen, fifth among U20 collegians and meets the qualifying standard for IAAF World Junior Championships in Eugene this summer. Turney's jump of 40' 4.75” at the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships in Pullman, Wash. on May 18 placed seventh. The Beavers' school record holder, who has set and re-set OSU's best triple jump mark four times in less than two seasons, ranks 52nd in the west region and worked her way into the meet on Sunday following a few medical scratches.
Players Mentioned
