CU's Burck, Taylor Add 5,000 AQ's at Kent State
KENT, Ohio—After already earning automatic qualifiers in the 3,000 last week at Boise State, Concordia distance runners Eric Burck and Alice Taylor nabbed ‘A’ standard performances in the 5,000 at the Golden Flash Gala hosted by Kent State on Friday.
Taylor smashed Concordia’s indoor school record with a 17:17.48, coming in third place behind Toledo’s Ari Fischer (16:48.66) and Mansfield’s Brenae Edwards (17:10.66).
Her time easily fell below the 18:26.15 NAIA Indoor automatic standard and cut more than a minute off her previous indoor school record of 18:52.60 set last year.
Burck toured the Kent State Fieldhouse in 14:48.69 in a fifth-place performance. His time fell just shy of his own school record of 14:46.58 set at last year’s NAIA Indoor Championships where he earned All-American honors with a third-place showing. Burck had plenty of time to spare to snare the automatic qualifier as the ‘A’ barrier is set at 15:15.75.
Malone’s Evan Gaynor, an All-American in cross country this season, took first place in the race with a 14:29.51, followed by Jake Edwards, competing for Ohio State, who crossed in 14:33.51 and Northern Kentucky’s Drew Harris (14:35.82).
“It was nice to see Alice get her second auto qualifier by running a considerable personal record,” CU head coach Randy Dalzell said. “This will give her a chance take a little break from intense training until we get back to the indoor season in January. It was also good for Eric to get the 5,000 qualifier out of the way as it will set up a situation similar to last year where he doesn’t have to worry about competition until later in the year while he is prepping for nationals.”