Lindsey Butterworth will lead five Simon Fraser University athletes to the NCAA Division II national track and field championships this week.
Butterworth, the nation-leading and pre-race favourite Clan middle distance runner, will compete in just one of two strong events at the outdoor championships in Allendale, Michigan from May 21 to 23.
Butterworth ran the fastest 800 metres this season, clocking a 2:04.11 in a qualifying race earlier this month. Her time was nearly three seconds faster than her next closest competitor.
Butterworth is also ranked second in the nation in the 1,500m.
But because of the closeness between the two events and the heats involved, Butterworth will concentrate solely on winning at 800m.
“We are not in contention for a team title because we don’t have the bodies, so my focus is on what’s best for the athlete, and it is best for Lindsey to choose one event to try to win a national title and the 800 is her best event,” said SFU head coach Brit Townsend in a school press release. “The 1,500m final is an hour before the 800 final so that is a lot of stress on the body.”
Butterworth also made the qualifying standard to represent Canada at the World Student Games.
Jennifer Johnson will join Butterworth on the women’s team at the nationals.
The SFU grad student will run in the 5,000m, where she enters the race ranked fourth overall.
Nationally ranked middle distance runners Cameron Proceviat, Travis Vugteveen and Marc-Antoine Rouleau will make up the Clan male entries at the nats.
Proceviat goes into the nationals ranked seventh in the 800m, with a personal-best time of 1:49.64 this season.
Vugteveen and Rouleau will both compete in the 1,500m, where they are ranked 10th and 16th, respectively.
Other SFU athletes just missed out on an invitation to the nationals.
Oliver Jorgensen, who last year as a freshman was the first male athlete from SFU to compete at the NCAA track championships, did not earn an invite this season.
Freshman long jumper Vladislav Tsygankov also missed the cut, despite leaping a season-best 7.37 metres. Tsygankov’s best was just five centimetres short of the entry distance.
The SFU women’s 4x400m relay team also missed out.
The Clan’s best time of 3:45.64 was just short of the 18th-ranked Academy of Art team that eked out the final placement at the nationals, with a season-best 3:45.08 clocking.
“In any other year our time would have been good enough to make nationals, but the calibre of athletes competing this year is so much stronger than in past years. We are really talking about .6 of a second,” said Townsend.
