(CU Independent graphic/Adam Milner)
The Big 12 Indoor Track and Field Championships are off to a running start.
Texas Tech leads the way in the women’s division with 48.50 points. Nebraska, meanwhile, paces the men’s field with 41 points during the first day of the Big 12 Indoor Championship Friday in Ames, Iowa.
The Colorado women sit in ninth place in the team race with eight points. The men, however, have scored only one point and are currently 11th.
Junior Laura Thweatt has scored for the Buffs, placing seventh in the 5000-meter run with a time of 16:40.62.
Sophomore Brianne Beemer also scored two points, finishing seventh in the pentathlon with a point total of 3611. Chantae McMillan, a junior from Nebraska, won the event with 4151 points.
Beemer, along with freshman Elizabeth Tremblay and sophomores Katie Cumming and Emma Coburn finished fifth in the 4000-meter distance medley relay with a time of 11:34.32.
Coburn has qualified for finals in the mile run, taking 5th in the prelim with a time of 4:48.05. She will also compete in the 3000 final.
In the men’s division, Aldo Vega is the lone scorer, placing eighth in the 5000 in 14:18.05.
The Buffs lost out on some key points when Steve Kasica, sophomore, narrowly missed qualifying for finals in the 800. He finished ninth in 1:50.80.
Redshirt freshman Matthew Biegner also finished ninth in the 1000 with a 2:27.23.
With three events remaining in the men’s heptathlon, Colorado’s Alex Von Hagen, junior, holds onto the eighth spot with 2836 points and is in position to score in day two.
Colorado will also have athletes competing in the men’s and women’s 3000-meter final.
Competition resumes on Saturday at 11:00 a.m. with the conclusion of the heptathlon and other event finals.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Gino Figlio at Gino.figlio@colorado.edu.
