The Gophers men’s track and field team tied for 12th at the NCAA indoor championships Friday and Saturday in Fayetteville, Ark.
Minnesota scored 18 points and had six first-team All Americans as well as one second-team All-American.
The distance medley relay of seniors Travis Burkstrand, Cameron Boy, Harun Abda and Nick Hutton tallied the highest finish for the Gophers with a third-place time of 9:34.21.
“It played out pretty much exactly how we thought it would go and how we wanted it to go coming in,” Burkstrand said. “Any time you can be third in the nation in the relays, it’s always a good thing.”
Head coach Steve Plasencia said the distance medley relay was in the mix to win the race until the last 200 meters.
While the distance medley relay placed the best, junior John Simons in the mile run was a “nice, surprising development” of the championships for the Gophers, Plasencia said.
Simons ran the last qualifying time in preliminaries to advance to the final at his first national meet. And while Simons said he planned to just have fun and enjoy the experience, he placed fifth with a time of 3:59.71.
Simons hadn’t trained for the mile this season and is more of a 3,000- or 5,000-meter runner.
But he ran a sub-four minute mile at the last chance meets the week before the championships. His time put him on the bubble of qualifying for the NCAA meet, which he made after a few scratches.
Simons equated his quick rise to that of a minor league baseball player sent to the major leagues.
“It’s your moment, time to really capture it,” Simons said.
Simons called his journey this indoor season “wild,” and Plasencia called it “remarkable.”
Simons didn’t have the accolades that his competitors in the mile had, which made his top-five finish pretty special, Plasencia said.
Abda also competed in the 800-meter run and finished fifth at 1:48.24. He and Boy competed in the 4×400-meter relay with junior Jacob Capek and redshirt freshman Goaner Deng, but the team placed last in the 12-team field.
Junior Jon Lehman took fifth place in the weight throw with a toss of 21.35 meters. Senior teammate Micah Hegerle placed 12th at 20.19 meters.
