Cavs' Badley Opens with NAIA Qualifying Time
SEATTLE, Wash.— Concordia senior Tim Badley opened his indoor track season with an automatic national qualifying time and a second-place finish at the University of Washington's Winter Preview meet held on Dec. 1 at Dempsey Indoor.
Badley, the defending Cascade Conference outdoor track 5,000-meter run champion, finished in second place in the 5,000 with a time of 15 minutes, 11.36 seconds, just shy of the winning time of 15:10.54 set by Jordan Welling of Western Washington.
Badley surpassed the NAIA automatic qualification standard of 15:17.80 by over six seconds to become the school’s first qualifier for the 2008 NAIA Indoor Championships to be held at the Memorial Center Mini Dome in Johnson City, Tenn., on March 6-8.
"Tim has been anxious to race since he sat out the cross country season,” Concordia head coach Randy Dalzell said. “He wasn't sitting around this fall, he was doing some great training and it showed today as he ran a very relaxed race.”
Badley was the sole representative of the CU program at the meet, as the rest of the program will open the indoor season on Jan. 19 at the University of Washington Indoor Preview.
"Tim has run at six national meets in his career here at Concordia and should make it eight with indoor and outdoor nationals this year,” Dalzell said. “He missed the finals by less than one second last year at indoor nationals and I know he wants to go back there and replace that memory with a better one this year.”
Concordia's young cross country and track and field program has experienced great success in the first two years with five NAIA national champions, fourteen All-Americans, and five conference or regional team titles.
"We're excited to get started with our third track season as we have added another very fine group of athletes to the program and everyone is working very hard to continue the tradition of excellence we have started here in the first two seasons,” Dalzell said.