@MIZ_TrackField Women Finish Fifth in NCAA D-I Program of the Year Standings
6/14/2017 9:52:00 AM | Track & Field
Three top-20 NCAA finishes guide Mizzou to the fifth-place finish
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Following top-20 finishes at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships and NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships, the Mizzou Women's Track & Field team finished fifth in the NCAA Division I Program of the Year standings. The Tigers most recently finished 17th at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, its highest finish ever at the NCAA Outdoor meet.
Mizzou tied with Michigan for fifth place with 41.5 points, trailing Oregon (three points), Colorado (22 points, Arkansas (30 points) and Stanford (30 points). To qualify for the Program of the Year award, teams must qualify for each of the NCAA Championships. Scoring is based on the team's finish at those meets (1st = 1 point, 2nd = 2 points, etc.) and the team with the lowest scored is crowned the award.
In November, the Mizzou women qualified for the NCAA Cross Country Championships for the first time since 2004, finishing 16th at the meet following the first of three national championships from junior Karissa Schweizer (Urbandale, Iowa). The national title for Schweizer was the first Cross Country National Championship in Mizzou history and the first All-American finish since 2003. Redshirt sophomore Jamie Kempfer (Festus, Mo.) finished 27th to earn All-America status as well, marking the first time since 1984 Mizzou has produced multiple Cross Country All-Americans.
Schweizer guided Mizzou to an eighth place finish at the NCAA Indoor meet in March, its third top-10 NCAA Indoor finish in program history and highest finish since 2001, when the Tigers finished seventh. The Tiger junior continued her distance dominance by taking the 5,000m run Indoor crown, crossing the finish line with a school record time of 15:19.14. The following day, Schweizer finished runner-up in the 3,000m run to notch 18 points at the national meet.
Last week, Mizzou finished 17th at the NCAA Outdoor meet following a national championship performance in the 5,000m run from Schweizer and a fifth-place finish in the discus from redshirt sophomore Gabi Jacobs (Bloomington, Ill.). With three NCAA titles, Schweizer is the only female in Mizzou Athletics history to capture multiple titles and she is now tied with wrestler J'den Cox (Columbia, Mo.) for the most NCAA titles in school history. The Urbandale, Iowa, native is the fourth female in NCAA history to win the distance triple crown (cross country, indoor 5,000m and outdoor 5,000m NCAA titles), and first since 2008. Schweizer is preceded by Villanova's Jennifer Rhines (1994-95), Arizona's Amy Skieresz (1996-97) and Texas Tech's Sally Kipyego (2007-08). Jacobs' fifth-place finish in the discus is the highest female discus finish in program history, besting Kearsten Peoples' sixth-place finish in 2012. During the 2017 outdoor season, Jacobs captured the SEC discus title, and then set the school record at the NCAA West Preliminary with a mark of 58.23m (191-0).
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