LEXINGTON, Ky. – 17 Spartans will compete in the NCAA Track and Field East First Round starting Wednesday, May 22 through Saturday, May 25 in hopes of qualifying out of the regional to earn entry to the NCAA Championships.
Five Spartan men kick off the week Wednesday, starting with the Pole Vault at 3 p.m. ET, while seven MSU women get underway on Thursday, with the additional men’s finals on Friday and women’s finals on Saturday. All of the action across the four days will be streamed live on ESPN+.
If the Spartans place within the top 12 in their event, they advance to the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at the famed Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon from June 5-8, where they will meet the top 12 finishers from the West Regional, being held in Fayetteville, Ark..
18 Spartans earned entry by posting an East Region top-48 mark in their respective events during the outdoor season. Sophomore Riley Hough was scratched from the postseason opportunity due to injury. It is the most student-athletes to an NCAA preliminary since 25 Spartans were selected in 2019. Last year, 12 earned berths, in 2022, 17, and in 2021, 15, while the 2020 NCAA Championships were canceled due to COVID.
The Spartans are no strangers to the Shively Track and Field Stadium on the hosting University of Kentucky’s, having traveled to Lexington to compete there for the Jim Green Invite on April 19 and 20.
Highlighting the five Spartans competing on Wednesday is graduate student Heath Baldwin in the 110m Hurdles. The Kalamazoo, Mich. native holds four MSU school records and was .02 seconds off from a fifth in the 110m hurdles (13.77) while scoring points in all four events he competed in last time out at the Big Ten Championships.
Typically competing in the decathlon, Baldwin focuses on just one event at regionals and will forgo the NCAA Championships in preparation for the US Summer Olympic Trials just two weeks later. The 2023 MSU Athletics George Alderton Male Athlete of the Year and five-time All-American is currently the U.S. No. 1 and World No. 3 in the decathlon after an NCAA seventh best all-time score of 8470 at the Mt. SAC Relays (April 17-18) that met the Olympic standard.
Fellow graduate student CarLee Stimpfel is an NCAA preliminary in the second consecutive season at the DI level, just missing the cut at last…
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