THE SCHEDULE:
                                                Seattle Pacific at Oregon State High Performance
                                Friday, April 28, 2017
                                SPU events at 8:25 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.
                                White Track & Field Center / Corvallis, Ore.
                                No live Webcast        Live results

                                                Seattle Pacific at Ralph Vernacchia Invitational
                              Saturday, April 29, 2017
                              Track events and field events, 9:00 a.m.
                              Civic Stadium / Bellingham, Wash.
                              No live Webcast or live results
 
                                                Seattle Pacific at GNAC Mulit-Event Championships
                       Monday-Tuesday, May 1-2, 2017
                       Heptathlon: 9:30 a.m. both days
                       Brian & Nichole Bohner Track / Nampa, Idaho
                                                        No live Webcast or live results
 

        Weekly release, with updated season performance lists (PDF)
        Ralph Vernacchia Invitational meet program (PDF)

SEATTLE – During a span of five days, the Seattle Pacific track and field teams will be quite busy – and very spread out among multiple venues.
 
Most of the Falcons will be heading to Bellingham for the Ralph Vernacchia Invitational. Competition at Civic Stadium begins at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, both on the track and in the field. The final event is scheduled for 4:35 p.m.
 
On Friday, a trio of Falcon distance runners will step up to the starting line against some of the best on the West Coast in the Oregon State High Performance meet. Junior Mary Charleson and freshman Kate Lilly will race in the 1,500 meters, and senior Sarah Macdonald will go in the 5,000.
 
On Monday and Tuesday, another SPU trio will be at the Northwest Nazarene University track in Nampa, Idaho, for the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Multi-Event Championships. Freshmen Scout Cai and Brooke Benner, and sophomore Geneva Lehnert are entered in the heptathlon.
 
FOLLOW IT LIVE
Live results will be available from Friday's meet at Oregon State, but not from Saturday's meet in Bellingham. Fans wishing to follow along with the conference heptathlon can do so by checking out periodic updates on the GNAC Twitter page.
 
COULD BE ANOTHER WET ONE
The weather for Saturday in Bellingham isn't expected to be much different than the weather the Falcons have been putting up with for most of the season. Temperatures will be mild, with highs pushing into the upper 50s. But skies are expected to be cloudy, and some rain is expected in the afternoon.
 
GETTING HYPED FOR THE HEP
Following their 1-2-3 finish at the GNAC pentathlon in February, Scout Cai, Brooke Benner, and Geneva Lehnert are well positioned to finish in the upper echelon of the heptathlon standings.
 
The biggest difference between indoors and outdoors is the addition of Alaska Anchorage star Karolin Anders, who is back for her final year after missing the 2016 outdoor season with an injury. Anders already has an NCAA automatic qualifying score of 5,180 points from the Hornet Invitational on March 17-18, and is the odds-on favorite to win her third conference crown. Based on her best marks of the season in each of the seven events, she could push toward 5,300 points.

 

The two-day test will be especially key for Cai. At the same Hornet Invite, she racked up an NCAA provisional qualifying score of 4,781. That currently has her ranked 16th nationally – the last available guaranteed spot to Florida. Based on her best marks of the spring, Cai is on track for 4,877 points, No. 2 behind Anders. If she can push into the 4,900s, it would enhance her chances of earning a national berth. Last year, the cutoff line fell at 4,950.
 
Benner and Lehnert come in ranked No. 5 and 6 on the GNAC list. Calculating their season-bests, Lehnert would tally 4,625 points (third), and Benner would finish with 4,478 (fifth). Benner scored 4,421 at the Hornet, and Lehnert had 4,407. The provisional qualifying minimum is 4,442.
 
Individual finishes will be worth important team points to those in the top 8. The Falcons currently are seeded for 15 points.
 




SCOUTING THE RALPH VERNACCHIA INVITATIONAL
Most of the Falcons will be in their customary events on Saturday. The women's 200-meter dash has the potential to be a good one, with seniors Kyra Brannan, junior Becca Houk, and freshman Lani Taylor among the participants. Taylor is coming off a college-best time of 25.29 at last Saturday's Spike Arlt Invitational in Ellensburg. Brannan ran a career-best 24.74 two weeks ago in Southern California, and Houk came up with a season-best 25.70, also in SoCal.
 
Those three, plus freshman Olivia Gabriel, also are penciled in for the 4x400 relay. SPU's season-best in that race so far is 3:49.62 on March 18 in Sacramento.
 
Brannan will take another shot at improving her 19-7 long jump mark. Gabriel, who ran a personal-best 58.85 in the 400 last week, is in that race again.

 

Junior Chynna Phan returns to the 800 meters for the first time since the mid-April trip to Azusa and Long Beach. She has an outdoor career-best time of 2:12.04 from Azusa, putting her in 32nd on the NCAA provisional qualifying list.
 
Senior Sammi Markham is in the shot put and javelin after her career-best performance in the shot at Ellensburg.
 
On the men's side, sophomore Jesse Phan is in the 800 after taking a one-weekend break from that race. Phan clocked a PR of 1:54.48 at Azusa Pacific.
 
Junior Ben Halladay returns to the 1,500 meters for the first time since April 8. He came close to breaking four minutes at the Doris Heritage Distance Festival on March 25, clocking 4:03.33.
 
The 400 will feature, as it usually does, senior Justin Ramsey, seeking another sub-50 to follow up on his PR of 49.65 from Azusa. Joining him will be freshman Lazarus Scarbrough, coming off his two-second PR a week ago.
 
Junior Peyton Harris won't long jump this week, but will take another shot at breaking 15 seconds in the 110-meter hurdles. His best is 15.09 on April 1 in Tacoma.
 
DOUBLING UP ON DOUBLE WINS
No other Falcon has done it this spring. However, Geneva Lehnert has done it twice: win two individual events in the same meet.
 
Lehnert pulled it off at last Saturday's Spike Arlt Invitational inside Central Washington University's Tomlinson Stadium. The capper was a season-best leap of 5 feet, 5¼ inches in the high jump.

 

But before that, she went 16-10¼ in the long jump. She got that distance on her first try, then scratched out of her last two attempts to start focusing on other events that were on her docket for the day.
 
The official results had listed Lehnert in 18th place in the long jump. Her actual jump, on the metric scale, was 5.14 meters. The results listed her at 4.14 meters (13 feet, 7 inches), so she initially was not credited with the win on the actual day of the meet.
 
Lehnert's other double-win day was March 25 at the Doris Heritage Distance Festival, when she also took the high jump and the long jump.
 
ADDING MORE W's
The two wins for Lehnert, plus senior Sammi Markham's in the shot put gave the Falcons 17 altogether for the season.
 
Lehnert now has four. Also with more than one are Markham (the shot last week; the javelin at the Heritage Festival) and Kyra Brannan (the 100-meter dash at the JD Shotwell Invite on April 1, and the long jump at the Emilie Mondor Invite on April 8).
 
Brannan also has run on two of Seattle Pacific's three victorious relays, one of them a 4x100, the other a 4x400.
 
Peyton Harris has a win for the men on the long jump at the Heritage, and was part of that day's victorious 4x400 relay.





SKIPPING A STEP
Lazarus Scarbrough went from slow-but-steady improvement to significant improvement last Saturday.

 

The Falcons freshman, whose first college 400-meter race took him 53.17 seconds on March 18 in Portland, chopped a whopping two seconds off his personal-best time last Saturday at Central.
 
Scarbrough won his heat in 50.80 seconds. He skipped right past the 51s, having previously gone 53.17, 52.97, and 52.81
 
With that PR time, Scarbrough is now ranked No. 23 on the GNAC list for that race. The top 20 declared athletes get into next month's GNAC Championships at Western Oregon University in Monmouth. The current 20th-place time is 50.42.
 
POLLING PLACE
SPU's women stayed in the West Region rankings as compiled by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association this week. The Falcons are No. 10 with 187.50 points That's actually one more point than last week's total of 186.42, when they were ranked No. 9.
 
Chico State remained atop the West rankings with 317.72 points.
 
Seattle Pacific is not included in this week's national rankings. The team is 64th overall among the 135 that earned points.
 
The USTFCCCA rankings are computer-generated, based entirely on current-season performances.
 
A NEW GNAC FAVORITE – BUT STILL CLOSE
With some strong performances at last week's UC San Diego Triton Invitational, Alaska Anchorage has edged in front of Simon Fraser as the (very slight) favorite to win the GNAC women's team title in two weeks.
 
Applying the appropriate team points to the top eight marks in each of the 21 events (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1), the Seawolves are seeded for 150 points heading into this weekend. Simon Fraser is at 140¼ (the fraction accounting for some ties), Central Washington for 119 ½, and SPU for 118½.
 
The only other team seeded for more than 100 is Western Washington (101½).
 
NATIONALLY SPEAKING
The Falcons did not pick up any NCAA Division II qualifying marks last week, so still have eight, all of them provisional. Here's where they rank heading into the week:
 
Kyra Brannan: 17th in long jump, 19-7 / 5.97m
Scout Cai:  16th in heptathlon, 4,781 points
                     38th in pole vault, 11-10½ / 3.62m
Mary Charleson: 7th in 5,000 meters, 16:41.59
                              24th in 1,500 meters, 4:30.84            
Sammi Markham: 22nd in javelin, 139-0 / 42.36m
Chynna Phan: 32nd in 800 meters, 2:12.02
Lani Taylor:  Tie 25th in 400 meters, 55.84
 
The NCAA's "desired minimum" number of competitors for individual events at nationals is 20 (for the heptathlon, it's 16). Meet officials have the option of adding additional competitors in any event as space allows.
 
Click on this link to see how the Falcons stack up within the GNAC. Click on this link for a look at NCAA Division II national leaders.
 
UP NEXT
The regular season concludes next Saturday, May 6, at the Ken Shannon Invitational. The meet at the University of Washington's Husky Track begins at 10:00 a.m. for field events, and 12 noon for running. The last race is set for 3:45 p.m.
 
This is the fifth year the Falcons will have raced on the purple oval. It typically has yielded some fast times, not the least of which was last year's school-record performance (54.68 seconds) by Jahzelle Ambus in the women's 400-meter dash.