OSU Travels to Lawrence for Conference Championships

Friday, May 12

Lawrence, Kan.

All Day

Oklahoma State University

Big 12 Outdoor Championships

May 10, 2017 | Cowboy Cross Country & Track, Cowgirl Cross Country & Track

MEET NOTES

The Basics
Oklahoma State competes with the rest of the conference this weekend at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships.
The Cowboys finished sixth with 84 points and the Cowgirls finished sixth with 74 points at last year's conference outing.

Follow the Meet
The 2017 Big 12 Outdoor Championships will be in Lawrence, Kansas, May 12-14. Adult tickets for all three days are available for $25, and children's tickets are for sale for $12. Single-day tickets are $10/$5 and are available online at the Big 12 or Kansas websites.
To follow the meet, live results are available online at the Big 12 and Kansas websites.
Results and a full recap will be online at okstate.com following each day of competition.
Follow @run4okstate on Twitter to keep up with OSU's championship campaign.

Broadcast Information
The 2017 Big 12 Outdoor Championships will be live streamed on FloTrack.org, available to watch with a subscription.
The broadcast will cover all of the running events, including the 10,000-meter runs Friday night.
The 1,500-meter run is the first preliminary running event, beginning at 4 p.m. Saturday, and the men's steeplechase closes competition at 8 p.m. Saturday.
The 4X100-meter relay at 5 p.m. is the first track final on Sunday, and the meet concludes at 9 p.m. with the awards presentation.

What to Watch For - Big 12's
There are 40 event titles and more than 1,500 points on the line this weekend at the Big 12 Championships.
While the Cowboys come into the meet as the fifth-highest ranked team in the conference and the Cowgirls sit outside the top-25, the Pokes have a chance to bring home some event titles and continue a dominating tradition in the middle and long distances.
OSU comes into the meet with No. 1 marks in five events including the men's 1,500-meter run (Josh Thompson), women's 800 (Kaela Edwards), women's 1,500 (Savannah Camacho) and the men's 5K and 10K (Hassan Abdi).
Not including those top-marks, OSU also has 12 marks inside the conference top-five across nine events, including four of the five fastest women's 800-meter times.
Craig Nowak is the conference defending 1,500-meter champion and was the high-point award winner at the indoor championships back in February.
The most decorated senior class in school history competes in its final conference championships in Lawrence.
The Cowgirl trio of Clara Nichols, Kaela Edwards and Savannah Camacho has scored 132 points at conference championship events since 2013, and Josh Thompson and Craig Nowak have put 83 points on the board for the Pokes since just 2016.
While the group has been dominant under a roof, outdoors, the quintet has only won a combined two titles due to injuries and absences from the meet.
Jacob Fincham-Dukes and Ieva Zarankaite have excelled in field events this season.
Fincham-Dukes is seeking his fourth-straight all-conference honor and Zarankaite is looking for her back-to-back honors in the discus.

Last Time Out
Kaela Edwards' 2:04.65 in the 800-meter run put her at No. 7 in the region in just her second open event of the outdoor season.
Ambra Wesley continued her breakout junior campaign with a win the 800-meter run in Fayetteville. Last weekend, the Cowgirl sprinter anchored the 4X400-meter team to a seventh-place finish at the Drake Relays, but Wesley moved up in distance Friday to the 800 where she ran a personal best of 2:08.51.
In the men's 1,500, Sukhi Khosla's five-second personal best made him the highest finishing collegiate athlete in the event. The redshirt-freshman's time of 3:45.69 puts him at sixth in the conference.
The men's 4X100-meter relay team only had to outpace Rogers State, but the Cowboy quartet did it in style, clocking a 40.11.
Logan Daily led off for the Pokes and Anthony Grogan Jr., Tyler Jackson and Temitope Olonisakin completed the run and put the Cowboys at fifth in the conference.

Coach Dave Smith Quotes

On his projection for the conference championships
"Anytime we can get into the top-three at outdoors, we're doing really well. We have very strong cross country teams, very strong indoor teams, but when we get to the outdoor season, there are a lot of events that we aren't competitive in yet. We're working toward that, but there are still significant areas where we don't score. We have to score really well in the areas we compete in – typically the middle-distances and long-distances. We're typically pretty good on the track, but we need to score a little better in the field. This year, if we can get into the top-three, that'd be outstanding."

On individuals stepping up
"I tell the team this every year: We always have an individual step up and surprise people. A couple of years ago we had two women score in the 400-hurdles. They went in ranked about 14th and 18th, but performed really well that day. Last year, Kaytlyn Larson in the 800 was kind of struggling coming in, but ran extremely well in the prelims, made the final and qualified for the regional championship. She had her best day of the year at the conference championships. In any event, if some of our athletes have their best performances of the year, they have a chance to score. A lot of women in the throws could score. The men's 4X1 could surprise people. They ran well this weekend. We've got some hurdlers on the women's side that are running well and I think both short and long hurdles could surprise people if they have good days."

On the current Cowboy and Cowgirl regional qualifiers
"The group we have up-top is really good and they have a great chance to advance to the national final in Eugene. When you look at Kaela Edwards, Savannah Camacho and Kaylee Dodd, they're women who have already done it in the past. Molly Sughroue and Kaytlyn Larson are all running well right now and Abbie Hetherington is running well. On the men's side, Craig Nowak and Josh Thompson have both been All-Americans, as has Hassan Abdi. Those three have a good shot to advance to the final. Jacob Fincham-Dukes made it indoors where it's a much tougher championship to make, so if he keeps doing what he's done all year, he has a great shot to make it."

On the senior class
"On the women's side especially, we've had five women who have really come together and done a lot to solidify our program as a national power in Kaela Edwards, Savannah Camacho, Clara Nichols, Anna Boyert and Natalie Baker. They've just been phenomenal for our program and have been a big part of who we are, and they've had an incredible impact of kind of changing who we are. They've done a great job of establishing a culture that will persist after they leave. On the men's side, the same can be said about Craig Nowak and Josh Thompson who came in as a two-year transfer. They've been great students, great athletes, great teammates and they've done a lot to shape our culture and create an attitude that persists throughout the whole team and will last after they leave."

Sunflower State Storylines
The Cowboys have won six 1,500-meter titles since 2009, including the last three with Nowak taking it in 2016.

OSU has taken the men's 5,000-meter title five times since 2009 and the 10,000-meter title four times since 2009.

Cerake Geberkidane and Kirbuel Erassa have swept both the 5K and 10K at the last two Big 12 Championships.

The Cowboys won a school record four Big 12 event titles at last year's Big 12 Championship.

The Cowgirls have set school records in points scored at a Big 12 outdoor championship in each of the past two seasons and have won four event titles since 2015.

Savannah Camacho, Clara Nichols and Kaela Edwards have combined for 132 of the Cowgirls' points at Big 12 Championships since 2013.

The Cowgirls own six of the 10-fastest times in the 800-meter run in the conference this season, including the top-three.

OSU owns all three of the fastest 1,500-meter times in the conference on the women's side.