Salukis qualify three for NCAA Indoor Championships

Friday, March 10

College Station, Texas

All Day

Southern Illinois University

NCAA Championships

03/06/2017 | 4:38:00 | Track and Field

By: Will Becque, SIUSalukis.com

The final competition of the indoor season is upon the Southern Illinois track and field program this weekend as three individuals will travel to College Station, Texas to compete in the 2017 NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships, March 10-11. Warren Hazel (400m dash), Jared Kern (shot put), and Kyle Landon (high jump) will all represent the SIU men at the national competition.

"The focus is: three-in, three-out, three All-Americans," Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Kathleen Raske said. "The focus for these three athletes is to continue doing what they did to get here, doing what they know how to do and executing when it counts the most. That's the nature of our sport, and that's what we talk about everyday."

Hazel, Kern, and Landon will be vying to become SIU's first men's indoor national champion since Michael Franks won the 400-meter dash in 1985. Behind the strength of three first-team All-Americans, including a fifth-place finish by Landon, Southern placed 23rd as a team a year ago at the national meet. It marked the highest finish for the Saluki men at the national meet since the 1992 squad, led by Olympian Darrin Plab, finished in a tie for 19th.

The Saluki men come into the national meet ranked No. 20 in the most recent USTFCCCA poll, the highest the men's team has been ranked since the USTFCCA went to its current computer ranking system prior to the 2008 season.

Kern and Landon both come into the NCAA Indoor Championships ranked second in their respective events.

Kern broke SIU alum John Smith's 34-year old meet record to win his first MVC shot put title on Feb. 23. He spent two weeks at No. 1 after he broke the school indoor record with a heave of 67'-2" (20.47m) at the Music City Challenge on Feb 10, but Mostafa Hassan of Colorado State surpassed Kern two weeks later when he threw 69'-10.75" (21.30m) at the Mountain West Indoor Track and Field Championships on Feb. 23. The two will duke it out in a field that features five who qualified for last year's indoor championships, including the runner-up from a year ago, Filip Mihaljevic of Virginia. The men's shot put will be contested on Friday, March 10 at 7:20 p.m. CST.

Landon tied the MVC Indoor Championship meet record with his winning clearance of 7'-4.5" (2.25m) en route to claiming his seventh MVC title. The four-time All-American scored 26 points and earned Co-Most Valuable Athlete at the conference meet. This marks the third-straight indoor season that Landon has qualified for the national meet in the high jump. Landon is one of five returning All-Americans that make up this year's field, which includes the reigning NCAA indoor champion, Trey Culver of Texas Tech. The field features a total of seven who qualified for last year's championships as well as five freshmen, including Marion (Ill.) high school graduate Darryl Sullivan, who now competes at the University of Tennessee. The men's high jump competition gets underway on Saturday, March 11 at 3:30 p.m.

Hazel will try to become the first Saluki to advance to the 400m finals since Franks did so in '85. The Old Road, St. Kitts native finished second in the 400m and third in the 200m at the MVC Indoor Championships, and clocked his fastest time of the season, 46.26, at the Music City Challenge, hosted by Vanderbilt University, on Feb. 10. The 400m semifinals begin on Friday at 6:35 p.m., with the finals starting at 4:50 p.m. on Saturday.

ESPN3 will stream the meet live on March 10 starting at 6:25 p.m. ET and March 11 starting at 4:55 p.m. ET. A re-air of the championship will take place on Sunday, March 12 starting at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2.