3 Syracuse athletes qualify for NCAA Outdoor Championships
Elijah Mallard, Jamir Brown and Benne Anderson advanced to the NCAA Outdoor Championships after strong performances at the East Preliminary. Courtesy of SU Athletics
Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our sports newsletter here.
In Elijah Mallard’s Syracuse career, the senior individually broke three program records — some multiple times — but he’d never earned a trip to the NCAA National Championships. Until Friday.
In his final season at SU, Mallard qualified for the Outdoor National Championships in Eugene, Oregon by breaking the program’s 400-meter hurdle record he set a month earlier.
Fellow hurdler Jamir Brown and 1500-meter runner Benne Anderson will join Mallard in Eugene, marking Brown’s second Division I National Championships and first outdoor bid, and Anderson’s second outdoor and third overall.
Brown finished second in the 110-meter hurdles at the preliminary round this weekend. The sophomore tied his personal-best time of 13.25 seconds in the final and defeated Samford’s Bradley Franklin, the nation’s second-fastest 110-meter hurdler.
Anderson placed second in his heat and 13th overall in the 1500 meter, enough to punch a ticket to Eugene. Anderson narrowly finished ahead of Michigan’s Brendan Herger, the country’s fifth-fastest runner.
SU’s 11 other runners who participated in the East Regionals in Lexington didn’t qualify for the national championship. Peter Walsdorf and Assaf Harari finished 14th and 16th in the 48-man 10,000-meter field, two and four spots short of advancing, respectively.
