The No. 7 UCF track and field team added three more entries for the NCAA Championships in its final day of competition at the East Preliminary Round at North Carolina A&T’s Aggie Stadium on Saturday.
Thanks to their clutch performances this week, six Knights matched the most number of entries (8) in program history for the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Junior Aurieyall Scott and Octavious Freeman, who already qualified for the 100 meters Friday, secured bids to the 200 meters Saturday with the region’s top two times.
Running side by side in lanes five and six, Scott and Freeman both clocked new personal records to automatically qualify while simultaneously topping the previous school record. Scott’s 22.52 (+1.9) edged Freeman’s 22.55 for the best time out of the field from the west and east regions heading to Eugene, Ore. Moreover, both times stand among the top-10 performances in the world this year.
The pair will also represent UCF in the 4×100 relay along with freshman Alexis Faulknor – a 100M qualifier – and junior Afia Charles. Despite some difficulty on the second hand-off, the quartet automatically clinched its spot by coming through with the best time of heat two and the second-fastest time of the region (43.85), finishing just four-hundredths of a second behind the day’s overall leader, LSU.
The 4×400 relay just missed finishing among the top 12 to advance to the NCAA finals by .24 of a second. Charles, Faulknor, Ne’Ausha Logan and Sandy Jean posted the second-best time of the season, 3:36.63, but was the first team out of the finals.
UCF will compete in five events at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., June 5-8. The meet will be televised June 6-8 on ESPN3 and ESPNU.
UCF’s NCAA Championship Qualifiers