Kentucky Track & Field Welcomes Thousands of Athletes for NCAATF Preliminaries

Nearly 2,000 of the best collegiate athletes in the country will compete at the UK Outdoor Track and Field Complex this weekend as Kentucky will serve as host for the NCAA East Preliminary Championships Thursday through Saturday.

The name of the game at the preliminary championships is advancing to the national championships finals site.

Twelve performers from each event at the preliminary round sites advance to the NCAA Championships – hosted for the fifth-consecutive year as part of a run that is scheduled to continue through 2021 at Oregon’s Hayward Field – June 7-10.

The meet features 1824 individual entries (1,728 in individual events and 96 spots for four-person relays). Accounting for individual athletes entered in multiple events 1,695 athletes have converged upon Lexington to compete this weekend.

Sixteen Rio Olympians, including Kentucky’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn who was a semifinalist in the 100m  hurdles for Puerto Rico at The Games last August, are slated to compete at NCAA East Prelims (Nine women, seven men).

“You can tell the difference in practice this week,” Kentucky Head Coach Edrick Floréal said. “They just walked out here today and they see the track is set up to host and everybody’s attitude and mood changed quickly. It’s kind of a good sense of pride to see your facility transform into a world-class facility.

“I’m hoping that the Kentucky faithful, the Big Blue Nation, shows up and shows Kentucky track and field some love.”

Kentucky is host site for the NCAA East Preliminary Championships for the first time. UK was the host school on the reconfigured UK outdoor track for the Southeastern Conference Outdoor Championships in 2014. UK has hosted the SEC Indoor Championships inside Nutter Field House seven times, most recently in 2015.

Tickets
All-Session Tickets

All-session tickets are now on sale via My UK Account and will include admission to all three days of competition (May 25-27). Gates will open at 10:30 a.m. ET on May 25 and at 1 p.m. May 26 & 27. Pre-purchased tickets must be exchanged for a wristband at the ticket windows prior to entering the complex each day.

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Single-session tickets

Single-session tickets will go on sale on Monday, May 15 at 9 a.m. ET via My UK Account. Single-session tickets will be available for each of the three days of competition (May 25-27).

Broadcast
The meet will be streamed live on SEC Network+ via WatchESPN/ESPN3. Bill Spaulding will call the action.

The coverage windows are set up to broadcast the quarterfinal and semifinal races on the track. The broadcast times were determined to cover the competitions where the advancers move on to the NCAA finals site, and then will also try to show the field events that occurred before the broadcast window opened.

The Thursday coverage will start at 9 p.m. ET. Friday’s show begins at 5:30 p.m., and the Saturday broadcast starts at 6 p.m.

The format
The East and West regions are comprised of all Division I institutions in 25 states apiece for each of the two regions. The East and West Preliminary Championship will be held with parallel schedules at two sites next weekend. Texas’ Mike A. Myers Stadium is host site for the West Preliminary Championships.
For each individual event contested at each of the preliminary sites, the top 48 declared student-athletes were accepted into the competition.  For each relay event, the top 24 declared relay teams were accepted into the competition.  Combined events (Heptathlon and Decathlon), are not contested at the preliminary sites.

For the heptathlon and decathlon, the top 24 declared student-athletes in each event based on their position on the national descending-order list were accepted into the Championships. Heptahlon and decathlon are not contested at preliminary championships sites.

UKTF outlook
Kentucky already has its first qualifiers for the NCAA National Championships — Tim Duckworth was named to the NCAA Championships decathlon field, which will be contested the first two days of NCAAs.

The seventh-ranked UK women’s team had 24 qualifiers entered into East Preliminary Championships this season. UK had a school-record 31 entries last year, and 25 in 2014 and 2015.
Kentucky has the seventh most women’s preliminary championships entries in the nation (24). Kentucky has the third most women’s entries in the East Region behind LSU (28) and Florida (26).
The men’s team has 20 entries, two more than a year ago, into the East Preliminary Championships. Kentucky’s 20 entries ranks tied for the 15th most in the country.

Thursday primer
Action starts at 11:30 a.m. ET in the women’s hammer throw. The men’s javelin is at noon. UK also has entries in the men’s and women’s long jump, the men’s hammer, men’s long jump, women’s javelin and women’s pole vault on Friday. In the field events, the qualifiers to Eugene will be determined on Thursday.

Jacob Thomson and Mick Iacofano will run in the 10,000 meters at 9:40 p.m. That’s the only track event with spots in the NCAA Championships field, available on Thursday.

The rest of the running events going off on Thursday are preliminary heats to advance to quarterfinals. The quarterfinal rounds are where spots in the Eugene field will be on the line.

Kentucky has entries in the women’s and men’s 1,500m, women’s and men’s 100m and men’s 800m prelims on Thursday.

UKTF NCAA Outdoor Championships Precedent

The UK women’s team advanced 17 of a possible 31 entries to Eugene out of East Prelims last season.

The UK men’s team advanced four from a possible 18, in addition to two decathlon qualifiers in 2016
The UK women’s team was 11th, and the men’s team was 22nd at 2016 NCAA Outdoor Championships

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