Senior Dage Minors has been selected to represent the Franklin Pierce University Men's Track & Field program at the NCAA Championships, as announced by the NCAA.
The NCAA Championships will be hosted by the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the City of Birmingham on March 9th - 11th at the Birmingham CrossPlex in Birmingham, Ala.
Minors will compete in the 800 meters, which will feature Preliminary Heats on March 9th at 7:50pm Bermuda Time, followed by the final on March 11th at 6:10pm. The top 16 competitors in each individual event are selected to the NCAA Championships.
Minors punched his ticket to the NCAAs relatively early in the season, as he posted a time of 1:48.70 on Jan. 28th, bettering the NCAA automatic qualifying mark, at the John Thomas Terrier Invitational, hosted by Boston University. The time is the fastest in the country so far this winter, and ranks fifth all time in Division II history. In all, Minors would go lower than the automatic qualifying standard three times in the 800 this season.
With the fastest time in the country, Minors is a legitimate threat to win the program's first-ever national title. The competition will be stiff however, with the nation's top nine seed times separated by just two seconds. A pair of runners from Fort Hayes State both posted times within two-tenths of a second of Minors and met the NCAA automatic qualifying mark as well: junior Decano Cronin (1:48.72) and sophomore Brett Meyer (1:48.89). In all, the field of 15 for the 800 meters is separated by just 3.27 seconds.
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