Illinois States Tom Barrett, Christian Goy and Kathrine Nielsen will represent the Redbirds at the 2000 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Wallace Wade Stadium, in Durham, N.C., Wednesday through Saturday.
This weekend marks the final meet of the 2000 outdoor campaign and will also be the last in the career of head coach John Coughlan, who announced his retirement on May 3. In his 23-year stint at Illinois State, the reigning Missouri Valley Conference Womens Coach of the Year has guided the Birds to five top-25 team finishes at nationals, including a 12th-place effort at the 1999 NCAA Indoor Championships.
Barrett, a three-time all-American, qualified for the NCAA Championships in the hammer for the third-straight year and in the discus for a second-straight time. The OFallon, Ill., native, owns the ninth-best hammer mark nationally, at 218 feet, four inches, and his discus mark is the 11th-best qualifying effort at 196 feet, 10 inches.
Barrett enters the national championships on the heels of being named the Missouri Valley Conference Field Athlete of the Meet for the third time. At the conference championships, Barrett repeated his 1999 feat of becoming the first athlete in league history to win five throwing titles in a year. Barrett ended his Redbird career as a 12-time conference champion.
The mens discus will be contested on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., while the hammer throw competition will be held on Thursday, at 11 a.m.
Nielsen, a junior from Glostrup, Denmark, qualified for the nationals in the heptathlon. Nielsens tally of 5,455 points in the two-day, seven-stage event is the Illinois State standard and ranks 12th nationally. Fresh off of her victory over the two-time Valley champion, Mellanee Welty of Wichita State, Nielsen enters the national meet peaking.
At the conference championships, not only did Nielsen post a personal best in her final heptathlon score, she had top efforts in five of the seven events. The conference meet also marked the second time this season that Nielsen defeated Welty in head-to-head competition. Nielsen routed Welty at the Texas Relays earlier this year and finished fifth in the competition, third among collegians.
Nielsen will compete in the heptathlon on Wednesday and Thursday, with the 100-meter hurdles starting off the first day at 2 p.m.
Goy qualified for the NCAA Championships in the 1,500-meter run with his school-record-tying time of three minutes, 43.41 seconds. The Rheinsburg, Germany native ranks 18th nationally. In 2000, Goy posted some impressive victories and made claim to an unofficial 1,500-meter triple crown of sorts.
In April, the Redbird sophomore won the 1,500 title at the prestigious Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut, Calif. Later in the month, Goy returned to the Drake Relays to defend his 1,500 title and became only the eighth athlete in the 91-year history of the meet to win back-to-back 1,500-meter championships. Two weeks ago, Goy defended another title by winning the 1,500 for the second-straight year at the Valley Championships.
The semifinals for the mens 1,500 will be held on Thursday at 7:55 p.m.
