SEATTLE – Why settle for breaking your own school record once when you can do it twice …
 
… on the same day …
 
… within 2½ hours?
 
On Friday afternoon, Andrew Bell definitely wasn't settling.
 
The Seattle Pacific freshman, who already had rewritten the school standard in the men's 60-meter hurdles last month in his college debut, came through with a double-encore at the UW Indoor Preview.
 
Racing in the first preliminary heat at Dempsey Indoor on the Washington campus, Bell was easily first across the finish line in 8.26 seconds. That bettered the 8.31 that he ran in the Spokane Invitational on Dec. 14.
 
His prelim time made Bell the No. 3 overall seed for the finals. He was in the first of the two four-man heats and went even faster, clocking 8.21. He won that heat and ultimately finished third overall after Washington's Jonathan Frazier went 8.06, and David Rock, competing unattached, was at 8.07 in the second finals heat.
 
For Bell, whose latest time puts him No. 6 on the all-time Great Northwest Athletic Conference list, that makes it three hurdles races and three SPU school records. Prior to the Spokane meet, the time to beat was 8.33 by David Njeri in 2020.

He also has won each of his three heats: prelims in Spokane and on Friday, and his section of the finals on Friday.
 
 

"Andrew is in a unique moment in his carer where he just gets better every race, and it's fun to watch," Falcons head coach Karl Lerum said. "He was an outstanding high school hurdler and he has made a really smooth transition to the 42-inch hurdles – that's hard, very hard. (High school hurdles at 39 inches high.) A lot of good high school hurdlers have not been able to make the jump to the 42s, so he's obviously off to an amazing start."
 
With the Spokane already under his shoes, Bell had more specific things in mind for Friday.
 
"The first meet, it was really nice if I could get a feel for how I'm going to run, especially going over new heights of the hurdles," Bell said. "So coming into today, I was really hoping to get to the finals and really kind of push myself there. My No. 1 goal was to push as hard as I could between the hurdles. It felt really good for the most part."
 
Even with breaking the SPU record twice, Bell was eyeing an even faster time.
 
"I was really hoping to go 8-point-1 something," he said. "(The) 8.21 was not quite where I was hoping to be."
 
Still … a record is a record. And three records in Bell's first three college races?
 
"I wasn't really expecting it," he said. "I'm really sticking with what Coach Karl is doing. I feel like what he has been doing has helped my speed a lot and to push myself more in practice and stuff like that to try to push my time."
 




ESVELT MAKES NCAA LIST IN 3000
With a spot in the NCAA 5000 meters virtually assured given her No. 3 ranking on that list, Annika Esvelt would like to see if she can also make it to Indianapolis in the 3000.
 
 

The senior took a big – and fast – step toward that on Friday with a personal-best time of 9 minutes, 33.10 seconds. That was seventh in her section of that event and 22nd overall.
 
As of Friday evening, with other meets still taking place around the country throughout the weekend, Esvelt's time ranks No. 5 on the Division II provisional qualifying list. It also moves her up to No. 7 (from No. 9) on the all-time GNAC list.
 
Her previous best time was 9:38.43, set in February 2022.
 
AND THAT'S NOT ALL
-- Hannah Chang finished third in the women's 60 hurdles final in 8.64, just nine-hundredths of a second shy of her personal-best 8.55 that she set last month in Spokane. Chang won her preliminary heat in 8.80.
-- Lizzy Daugherty was third in the women's pole vault with a clearance of 12 feet, 8 inches She subsequently had a good look at the next bar of 13-1 ¾, but was not able to clear.
 

-- Freshman sprinter Jada Sarrys finished her heat of the 60-meter dash in 7.96 seconds. That made her the first Falcons since 2022 to break eight seconds. The last one to do that was Peace Igbonagwam with a 7.78 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference finals. The fastest SPU time in 2023 was 8.16; the fastest in 2024 was 8.14, both by Aniya Green.
 
UP NEXT
Most of the Falcon distance runners will be in Dempsey on Saturday for the second Mile City meet. That day-long event is all about running one-mile races. The women's division starts at 10:30 a.m The women's invitational for elite runners begins at noon, followed by the men's invitational at 12:30. The men's division for those not in the invitational gets going at 1:00 p.m.
 
The next regular meet is the UW Invitational on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 31-Feb. 1. On Friday, track races begin at 2:00 p.m. and field competition starts at 5:00 p.m. Saturday's action starts at 10:00 a.m. both on the track and in the field.
 
 
NCAA WOMEN'S INDOOR TRACK & FIELD
UW Indoor Preview
Friday, Jan. 17, 2025
Dempsey Indoor / Seattle, Wash.
 
Team scores – Not kept.
 
SPU EVENTS ONLY
60-meter dash – 1, Teagan Zwaanstra (Stanford) 7.37.  SPU – 27, Jada Sarrys 7.96; 38, Sarah Bailey 8.16; 53, Sophie Hanay 8.34.
200 – 1, Caitlyn Cheney (WWU) 24.90.  SPU – 22, Jada Sarrys 26.25.
400 – 1, Bec Bennett (WWU) 54.40.  SPU – 12, Johanna Brown 59.75.
3000 – 1, Melissa Tanaka (Unattached) 9:05.28.  SPU – 22, Annika Esvelt 9:33.10#; 41, Maya Ewing 10:08.48.
60 hurdles – 1, Tess Stapleton (Stanford) 8.38.  SPU – 3, Hannah Chang 8.64.  Preliminaries – 3, Chang 8.80 (won Heat 3).  Other SPU – 27, Tia Cates 10.17.
4x400 relay – 1, Simon Fraser 3:46.36.  SPU – 6, Seattle Pacific (Johanna Brown, Jada Sarrys, Sophie Hanay, Evangelina Rowland) 4:00.09.
Pole vault – 1, Helen Hoadley (Hawaii) 13-1 ¾ / 4.01m.  SPU – 3, Lizzy Daugherty 12-8 / 3.86m; T7, Emily Thomason 11-8 / 3.56m; Kaitlyn Askay no height.


Mile City
Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025
Dempsey Indoor / Seattle, Wash.

Overall winner – Lauren Harper (San Diego State) 4:55.33.
SPU – 39, Madelyn Buckley 5:12.30 (13th in Heat 12); 58, Nicki Yorges 5:17.16 (11th in Heat 10); 70, Katelyn Flolo 5:20.43 (8th in Heat 8); 75, Alexa Gossett 5:21.59 (11th in Heat 8); 93, Matise Mulch 5:25.42 (16th in Heat 11); 114, Ella Milanovich 5:32.02 (3rd in Heat 5).

Invitational winner – Gabija Galvydyte (Nike Bowerman Track Club) 4:27.96.  No SPU.
 
 
NCAA MEN'S INDOOR TRACK & FIELD
UW Indoor Preview
Friday, Jan. 17, 2025
Dempsey Indoor / Seattle, Wash.
 
Team scores – Not kept.
 
SPU EVENTS ONLY
60-meter dash – 1, RayRay Wells Jr. (GLF) 6.55.  SPU – 41, Tarelle Hunter 7.20.
400 – 1, Alexander Rhodes (Puget Sound) 46.51.  SPU – 16, Robert Joshua 51.80.
600 – 1, Chase Walter (Cal Poly) 1:16.14.  SPU – 13, Noah Bouknight 1:32.38.
60 hurdles – 1, Jonathan Frazier (UW) 8.06.  SPU – 3, Andrew Bell 8.21 (school record, breaks old record of 8.26 set by Bell in the preliminaries).   Preliminaries – 3, Bell 8.26 (won Heat 1).  No other SPU.
Pole vault – 1, Simon Park (UW) 17-7 1/4  / 5.37m.  SPU – 6, Mason Hrcek 14-2 / 4.32m; Mikel Saxon no height.


Mile City
Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025
Dempsey Indoor / Seattle, Wash.

Overall winner – Colin Peattie (Santa Clara) 4:08.39..
SPU – 92, Nathan Korth 4:27.09 (1st in Heat 14); 115, Nathaniel Gale 4:29.72 (5th in Heat 17); 126, Isaac Venable 4:31.02 (5th in Heat 18); 159; Silas Demmert 4:33.97 (11th in Heat 16); 331, Gabe Endresen 4:59.84 (17th in Heat 13)..

Invitational winner – Nathan Green (UW) 3:50.74.  No SPU..


SPU SOCIAL 

• Twitter - @SPUSports & @SPUXCTF
• Instagram - @SPUSports & @spuxctf
• Facebook - /SPUSports

Seattle's only NCAA Division II Scholarship Program | #GoFalcons