March 10, 1999

TWO MONMOUTH TRACK ATHLETES QUALIFY FOR NCAA NATIONAL INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS

Two Monmouth College women's track and field athletes have earned the right to compete in the 1999 NCAA Division III Indoor National Championships. The national meet will be held this Friday and Saturday, March 12 and 13. Sophomore Constance Jackson (Peoria,IL/ Woodruff) and junior Julie Larson (Altona,IL/ROWVA) left today with Monmouth head coach Roger Haynes for Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio in preparation for this week's competition.
Jackson will run in the 400 meter dash preliminaries on Friday. She has the slowest seed time (:58.90 seconds) of the 13 competitors in the field but will earn a spot in the finals if she posts one of the six fastest times in the heats. Jackson also qualified for the 55-meter dash but her provisional time of 7.38 seconds did not make the field cut in the shorter race. Last weekend, Jackson led the Fighting Scots to a second-place team finish at the Midwest Conference Indoor Championships by winning five events, three individual races and two relays. She became only the second female in MWC history to sweep all three indoor sprint events (55, 200 and 400) and set two league records -- in the 55 and 200 dashes -- over the weekend. She was named co-track event MVP for her performance.
Larson also earned co-MVP honors in the field events as the junior jumper set a new Monmouth indoor record in the long jump with her winning leap of 18' 5 3/4". The jump was three inches better than the old school record and was an automatic qualifier for the NCAA Meet. Larson is ranked fourth among the 13 jumpers in the national meet field and will be the first athlete down the runway on Friday morning, drawing the first position in the first flight of the long jump. The top six will advance to the final round later in the morning to determine the order of the All-American awards.
An athlete must place among the top six in an event in order to be recognized as a track and field indoor All-American. Monmouth has had two female indoor All-Americans in team history, ironically in both events in which this year's qualifiers are competing. Michelle Dehner finished third in the long jump in 1993 to claim the college's first indoor honor and Heather Furrow placed fourth in both 1996 and 1998 in the 400 meters.