How and What to Follow at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships

The NCAA Indoor Track & Field Indoor Championships take place this weekend (March 12-13) in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Highlights include Oregon distance stars Jordan Hasay and Nicole Blood tripling up to see if they can bring home a national title for the Ducks. They will have fierce competition from the 2009 Outdoor Champs, the Texas A&M Aggies, who have Jessica Beard ranked #1 in the 400m, Porscha Lucas ranked #2 in the 200m and Gabby Mayo and Natasha Ruddock ranked #2 and #3 in the 60m hurdles. It may just come down to the 4x400 relay at the end of the meet, in which A&M and Oregon are ranked #2 and #3, respectively, with only .11 seconds separating their entry times.

Some highlights:

Fri, 10:20pm EST: Friday evening will kick off with the Distance Medley Relay, in which Oregon is ranked #1. The Tennessee women will look to recreate last year's magic (where they won and set a World Record), and Villanova will be in the hunt as well with 4:35 miler Nicole Schappert leading off and 9:04 3K-er Sheila Reid anchoring.

Fri, 6:40pm EST (Prelims)/Sat, 7:45pm EST (Finals): Watch the 60m hurdles for Olympian Queen Harrison of Virginia Tech, who has been running world-class times this year and is ranked #1 in the NCAA.

Sat, 12:30pm EST: Women's Pentathlon kicks off with its first event, the 60m hurdles. Liane Weber of Clemson, the season leader, will face Oregon's Brianne Theisen who placed 3rd last year as a freshman. Look for Chaunte McMillan of Nebraska to sneak in and possibly steal the top spot, as the Husker multieventers are known for throwing strikes on game day (not that I'm biased).

Sat, 9:10pm EST: Cross-Country Champ Angela Bizzari will be dueling with Lisa Koll of Iowa State in the 3000m. Koll will be coming off a race for the 5000m title the night before but has been putting up performances this year that are a level above most of the other NCAA women this year.

ESPN360.com will stream portions of the championships live beginning at 9 p.m. EST, Friday, March 12, and 7:10 p.m. EST, Saturday, March 13. NCAA.com will stream supplemental coverage as available when ESPN360.com is not live.

ESPN2 will air a 90-minute highlight recap at 1:30 p.m. EST, Wednesday, March 17.

CBS College Sports All-Access is also providing live (and free) online coverage

Full Schedule & Results

List of Qualifiers in Each Event

Links to Previews and Feature Articles from around the web:

Angela Bizzarri Is Named #4 Illini Athlete Of The Decade

Oregon Women Attempt to Make History

LetsRun.com's Women's Distance Preview

FloTrack at the NCAA's

View AnnGaff's Profile

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• Track & Field, Sports, SportsPLUS, College, Student-Athlete

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