Men’s sprints, Svaerd highlight opening day at Division II Championships

ALLENDALE, Mich. – Texas A&M University-Commerce had four entries qualify for event finals on Thursday’s opening day of action at the NCAA Division II Championships. 

The men’s 4×100 meter relay team of Malcolm Woods, J.T. Smith, Andre Norman, and Delan Edwin opened the action by posting the top time in the preliminary round at 39.74 seconds, four-tenths of a second ahead of their nearest competition. They will run in the finals at 1 pm EDT Saturday. 

A few minutes later, Smith and Edwin ran in the 100-meter dash preliminaries, with Smith placing second at 10.36 seconds and Edwin placing eighth at 10.45 seconds. Both Lions will advance to Saturday’s 2:20 pm finals in that event. 

In the women’s 400-meter hurdles, Minna Svaerd placed second in her heat and fifth overall in the preliminary round. She had a time of 1:00.14. She will run in the finals at 7:05 pm EDT Saturday. 

In other action, Danielle Nicholson placed 12th in the women’s 400-meter dash at 57.58 seconds, and Hailey Wanoreck placed 13th in the women’s hammer throw at 53.23 meters (174′ 7″). 

The Lions scored no points Thursday, but those opportunities change on Friday, starting with Ushan Perera and Micky Ferdinand in the men’s high jump and Josh Boateng in the men’s discus throw at 1:00 pm CST. Nicodemus Rotich runs in the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase finals at 3:45 pm, with three other events in preliminaries.

FRIDAY, MAY 28

SATURDAY, MAY 29