NCAA D3 Championships Recap

NCAA D3 Championships Recap

May 24, 2015 by Gordon Mack
NCAA D3 Championships Recap

By: Scott Rodilitz

With the 2015 Division III Outdoor season firmly in the rearview mirror, it’s time to look back at some of this weekend’s biggest stars in the distances as well as in the hunt for the podium places.
 

Tricia Serres

At the start of the outdoor season, the former freshman phenom from Luther seemed in danger of never living up to the potential she flashed when trying to run the legs off Christy Cazzola in 2013 and 2014. As an 800/1500 runner, she had never truly shown the speed required to be a national champion in the metric mile, and after a disappointing 36th place finish at cross country nationals (her worst ever), Serres missed the entire indoor season. However, she returned with a vengeance this spring, running 4:25 to come in as the top seed. In the brutal wind on Saturday, though, with plenty of speedy women eager for an opportunity, Serres showed no fear and took the race out hard from the gun. Despite slowing in the final lap, she held off her fast-closing peers in the final stretch to earn her first national title. Doubling back in the 5k, she turned the jogfest into an exciting race and was rewarded with a runner-up finish. 
 

Dawson Miller

Hate the man bun all you want, complain about his pacing indoors if you’re so inclined, but Miller came to play this weekend. He finished third two years ago, second last year, and he was such a strong favorite that there didn’t seem to be much he could do that would be noteworthy. A win was simply the expectation. However, Miller came here not just to race the field, but also to race the ghosts of Jack Davies and Michael LeDuc, the only DIII athletes to beat Miller in steeplechases since his sophomore year. Though Miller’s time of 8:46.58 missed LeDuc’s winning time from last year, it was a massive personal best and puts him in range of the Olympic Trials standard, which he will be chasing in the coming weeks as well as next year.
 

Division I Transfers

Both winners of the 5k were transfers from DI schools. Melissa Skiba of Cal Lutheran started at UCLA and in her three years at the DIII level, finished third, second, and finally first in the 5k. Though it seemed foolish to let the race go out so slowly (nearly 6:00 for the first mile) since she was one of the only fresh athletes in the field, Skiba showed that her victory was inevitable as she blew the doors off everyone in the final 200. 
 
On the other end of the eligibility spectrum, recent U of Minnesota transfer Josh Thorson has already made his presence felt on the DIII scene. The third place finisher in both cross country nationals and the indoor 3k, Thorson used a 60 second final quarter and a new personal best of 14:10.29 to run away from runner-up Aldis Inde of Williams and add an individual 5k title to his collection. He already helped his team to a DMR title indoors, and his performance this weekend helped the BluGolds lock up a second place team finish despite losing Thurgood Dennis to injury. Just finishing up his sophomore year in terms of eligibility, Thorson will be the favorite at the start of cross country next fall and a name to remember for the next few years.
 
Also of note, two-time steeplechase champion Lucy Cheadle of Wash U will be moving in the other direction. She will use her final year of outdoor eligibility for the CU Buffaloes, and it will be exciting to see how she performs against the nation’s best.
 

St. Olaf Men

The Oles sent a shocking six runners to contest the 1500, and managed to qualify five of those six into the finals. They continued to impress on Saturday, with Paul Escher winning the race with a blistering final 150 and Jake Campbell closing well to take third. Only 3:43-man Charlie Marquardt of Haverford was able to break up the two teammates. The Oles also got points from Jake Brown in the steeplechase and Phil Meyer in the 10k, using just their distance crew to score 27 points (the Williams men, with 19 points, scored the second-most distance points). However, St. Olaf left some points on the table toward the end of the meet. They had three of the last five in the 1500 final, including XC national champ Grant Wintheiser who barely managed an All-American finish after struggling with injury to close out his collegiate career. Needing some points in the 5k to earn his team a podium finish, Campbell never was in the race and finished a well-beaten fifteenth. 
 

Salisbury Men (aka the Luke Campbell show)

For the second straight year, Luke Campbell won both the 110 hurdles as well as the 400 hurdles in impressive fashion. Last year, those were the only 20 points that Salisbury scored. This time, however, Campbell got a little help from his friends as the Sea Gulls claimed the fourth and final place on the podium. Coming in ranked only seventh as a team, they needed everything to go right—not a great place to be in—but everyone representing Salisbury on the men’s side scored some points, including both relays and fifteenth-seeded shot putter Dylan Burkett.
 

UW La Crosse Eagles Women

The men continued their usual dominance of the track scene, earning their twenty-ninth track title, while the women won just their third title outdoors and first since 1984. As rare as it is for a program to win both men’s and women’s titles (Lincoln did so in 2000, but they shared the men’s title with NCC), the margins of victory (25 and 30) made this even more impressive. Though champions Marissa Mahr (400h)and Bria Halama (Triple Jump) on the women’s side and Grant Havard (Discus) and the 4x100 on the men’s side certainly helped matters, this was a team performance, and the Eagles as a whole should be justly commended.