49ers Send 17 Student-Athletes to Tallahassee for NCAA East Regional
May 27, 2008
Charlotte, N.C. - Coming off an Atlantic 10 Championship-winning outdoor season, the Charlotte 49ers track and field team is sending 17 student-athletes to Florida State University for the NCAA East Regional this weekend. Five men and a dozen women will represent the Niners en route to hopefully advancing the NCAA Championships June 11-14 at Drake University.
"Everyone's really looking forward to getting down to Tallahassee and competing with the best in the East Region," head coach Robert Olesen said. "We've never competed as a team at Florida State so seeing new places and a new facility will be exciting. We have seventeen athletes competing, ten of them for the first time at the regional level and five of them are freshmen, so it will be great experience. Several of our entries are ranked in the top five which is significant as that is the number of automatic qualifiers to nationals."
"We're confident that we will advance six or seven athletes to the national championship."
On the women's side, the 4x100m team of Lajarsha Moses, Lamarra Currie, Courtney Patterson and Ebonie Cunningham head to Tallahassee ranked third in the region with a 44.39 showing at the Georgia Tech Invitational last weekend. Currie will also compete in the 100m and 200m, in which she is ranked seventh and 21st, respectively, while Patterson will contest in the same individual events. Joining them is senior steeplechase standout Tsehaye Dagnachew, who enters the race ranked second in the region, qualified with a program record and Olympic Trials B qualifier of 10:10.53 in the 3000m event at the Mt. SAC Relays. In the field events, junior Pat Springs will compete in the long jump after finishing the regular reason ranked fourth in the region with a school-record leap of 20'10.75 (6.37m) at North Carolina A&T.
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Other women's competitors include Sunita Brathwaite (100m hurdles; ranked 20th regionally), Danielle Brown (triple jump; 22nd), Aja Jackson (800m; 16th), Moses (100m; 25th) and the 4x400m team of Yvonna Hines, Cunningham, Olivier Brown and Coleman, who finished the season with a ranking of 15.
On the men's side, freshman Darius Law will compete in both the 200m and 400m, in which he was ranked 28th and 17th, respectively, in the region. Joining him Adu Dentamo, who qualified in the 3000m steeplechase with a school-record time of 8:58.41, ranking him 18th in the east region, and Korel Mack in the 110m hurdles. In the field events, the 49ers will be represented by both Tavaris Leak and LaMarcus Outing in the long jump, where they were ranked 16th and 26th regionally, respectively.
The top five finishers in each individual event and the top three finishers in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays will automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships. The next seven to nine best nationwide performers from the regular season rank list that do not automatically qualify will also advance to the Championships on at-large berths.
Charlotte fans can follow results live here.
