Feb. 28, 2018
Auburn, Ala. - Six athletes and one relay will represent the Auburn track and field team at the 2018 Men's and Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships, the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Track and Field and Cross Country Committee announced. The championships will be held March 9-10 in College Station, Texas.
Auburn qualifiers on the men's side include Nathon Allen (400m), Akeem Bloomfield (400m) and Raheem Chambers (60m). The men's 4x400m relay that includes Allen, Bloomfield along with Randall Ceneus, Joshua Burks and alternate Xavier Coakley also qualified.
The women's qualifiers include Jonielle Smith and Natalliah Whyte in the 60m and Jakayla Hand in the triple jump. It will mark the first appearance at the NCAA Indoor Championships for all three.
Smith is tied for third nationally in the 60m with time of 7.18, while Whyte is the fastest freshman in the country ranking fifth in 7.19. Both posted their qualifying times earlier in the season and equaled those performances at SEC Indoors. Smith is the No. 2 all-time performer at Auburn in the event, while Whyte has had an outstanding indoor season, breaking the freshman school marks in 60m and 200m.
A senior from Opelika, Ala., Hand is ranked eighth nationally in the triple jump after a personal-best leap of 13.30m/43-7.75 garnered her a fourth-place finish at the SEC Championships last weekend.
Bloomfield, the SEC champion at 400m, has the nation's second fastest time in the event after clocking a school-record 45.02 in early February at the Tiger Paw Invite. The Kingston, Jamaica, finished tenth at the 2017 NCAA Indoor Championships and is the first Auburn 400m runner to qualify for NCAA indoors in back-to-back years since Sanjay Ayre in 2002-03.
The NCAA Outdoor runner up at 400m in 2017, Allen qualified for nationals after posting a 46.03 en route to a third-place finish at SECs.
Chambers is tied for sixth nationally in the men's 60m dash with a time of 6.60, posted on Feb. 9 at the Tyson Invitational. It marks the eighth time in the last 10 years an Auburn sprinter has qualified for nationals at 60m.
The Auburn men's 4x400m relay finished fourth at SEC Indoors with a time of 3:06.09, the second fastest time in school history and will enter the championships seeded 14th.
ESPN3 will stream the meet live on March 9 from 5:30-9:15 p.m. CT and March 10 from 4-7 p.m. CT. A re-air of the championship will take place twice on Sunday, March 11 at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN2 and 8 p.m. CT on ESPNU and again on Monday, March 12 at noon CT on ESPNU.
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