Relay Club Newsletter - Summer 2007

Four Huskers Claim Big 12 Titles

The Nebraska women's team registered the program's first four conference champions of the 2007 season on the road to earning a surprising runner-up finish (117 points) at the Big 12 Outdoor Championships May 11-13 in the Husker-hosted event.

 

The Huskers also finished fifth (86) during a balanced men's team race that featured just 37.5 points separating the top six teams.

 

Ashley Selig and Jenny Green each won their fourth career Big 12 crowns with Selig in the women's heptathlon and Green in the women's pole vault. Selig broke the Ed Weir Stadium record with her score of 5,726, while Green exceeded the 13-foot mark for the first time outdoors in 2007 (13-5 1/4).

 

Dace Ruskule put her senior season back on track with a win in the women's discus with a season-best throw of 182-10. The performance marked her second career Big 12 crown and the first time she had reached 180 feet since the season-opening Stanford Invitational.

 

Sheryl Morgan closed out the weekend with her first career conference victory in the women's 400-meter hurdles. She posted the nation's then-seventh-fastest time of 57.04 while ending an eight-year Texas winning streak in the event.

 

 

NU Youngsters Shine at NCAAs

Nebraska capped the outdoor season with a trip to the 2007 NCAA Track and Field Championships in Sacramento, Calif. The Huskers brought the second-largest contingent of athletes to the competition, as 25 NU athletes qualified for the meet, including a nation-leading 12 men's competitors.

 

Although Nebraska failed to gain an individual title, the Huskers did bring home five All-America awards.

 

Senior Ashley Selig posted a personal best score of 5,794 to move into fifth place during day two of the heptathlon, after finishing the first day of competition ranked sixth. Selig's new best further solidified her place as the second highest scoring women's heptathlon competitor at Nebraska in school history. Selig is second only to Cris Hall, who scored a 5,936 in 1992.

 

Although she failed to defend her title as the NCAA outdoor women's discus champion, senior Dace Ruskule still finished her career at Nebraska with another All-America honor by placing eighth with a top throw of 169-9.

 

Junior Dusty Jonas maintained his All-American streak in the high jump, earning his sixth consecutive top-eight finish with a sixth place leap of 7-2 1/2. The high jump crown stayed in the Big 12 however, as KansasState sophomore Scott Sellers jumped 7-7 1/4 to take home his first NCAA title.

 

Sophomore Brysun Stately wrapped up NU's top overall finish by placing third in the women's pole vault. The sophomore, who entered the meet with a nation-leading vault of 14-3 1/4, finished the finals with a jump of 13-7 1/2 for the third top-eight finish of her career. She tied for sixth last season in Sacramento while competing as a freshman for USC before adding a seventh-place effort (13-5 1/4) for NU earlier this year at the NCAA indoor meet.

 

In one of Nebraska's finest overall performances of the outdoor championships, freshman Scott Wims concluded a remarkable week of competition with a seventh-place finish in the men's 200-meter dash. With the finish, Wims became the only Husker freshman to earn All-America status at this season's outdoor nationals.

 

The 2007 Midwest Regional champion in the 200-meter dash, Wims represented Nebraska in more events at the outdoor nationals than any other Husker, competing in three events total and posting a new career-best time of 20.61 in the 200-meters during the semifinals in that event.

 

The NU women finished among the top-25 teams ranked 18th overall with 12 points, and the men wrapped up their season in 53rd place with 4.5 points. This is the sixth consecutive season that the Husker women have finished their outdoor campaign ranked among the nation's top-25.

 

 

NU Track and Field Leads Academic Honors

The Nebraska track and field program enjoyed five ESPN the Magazine Academic All-Americans in 2007, more than any other track team in the country. Senior Ashley Selig (first team) and juniors Jenny Green (first team) and Kim Shubert (second team) represented the Husker women's team, while seniors Nate Probasco (first team) and Issar Yazhbin (first team) were selected for the men.

 

Selig, Green and Probasco all earned repeat selections, while Shubert and Yazhbin made their first appearances.

 

With these five selections, NU finished the 2006-07 academic year with nine CoSIDA Academic All-Americans to increase Nebraska's nation-leading total to 248 all-time across all sports.

 

The Nebraska women's track and field program now features 20 all-time CoSIDA Academic All-Americans, including nine first-team selections. The men's program has 12 CoSIDA Academic All-America honors in school history, six of which have come in the last three seasons. Probasco and Yazhbin are just the second and third first-team selections for the program all-time.

 

 

Grimes Receives National Honor

Nebraska pole vault/multi-events coach Kris Grimes was honored as one of the nation's top assistant coaches in 2007 by the USTFCCCA (United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association). Grimes was selected as the top women's jumps/combined events coach for the NCAA Midwest Region for the year.

A second-year member of the Husker track and field staff, Grimes helped Nebraska send one of the nation's largest contingents to the NCAA Outdoor Championships with 28 individuals. Eight of those student-athletes trained under Grimes, including five women, two of whom (Selig and Stately) gained All-America honors at the event.

 

Grimes also trained a nation-leading four multi-event athletes for the 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championship, including Selig, who finished fifth overall.

 

 

NU Recruiting Class Continues to Build

The 2008 Nebraska recruiting class has continued to build throughout the outdoor season. The Husker coaching staff has added eight athletes during the spring season, to bring Nebraska's incoming class to 22.

 

Nebraska's eight new signees include seven men's competitors. Notably among this group is Kansas native Austin Braman, who was the No. 2 ranked prep javelin thrower in the nation in 2007 after winning the Kansas state class 4A javelin title for ChanuteHigh School in both his sophomore and senior seasons. Braman also set a state high school record in the javelin in May with a throw of 208-7. He owns a career best throw of 217-9, which would have ranked 30th in the NCAA for the 2007 collegiate season.

 

Jamaican Nicholas Gordon is also a highly touted recruit, having won the 2007 Jamaican high school boy's championship in the long jump while also placing second in the triple jump. A product of Calabar High School in Kingston, Jamaica, Gordon owns personal-best leaps of 24-9 ¾ in the long jump and 49-11 ¾ in the triple jump. The two marks each would have ranked among the top five national high school performances this season if he competed in the United States, including the No. 2 long jump distance.

 

The Huskers also enjoy three in-state signees, including Adam Dailey (Wahoo), Todd Gulizia (Omaha) and Tyler Hitchler (Fremont).

 

In addition to winning Class B crowns in the 110-meter hurdles (14.65) and 400-meter dash (49.74), Dailey also ran on the Cavaliers' bronze-medal 4x400-meter relay.

 

Gulizia won the 2006 Nebraska Class A state cross country championship and tops the 2007 state charts for both the 1,600- (4:18.0) and 3,200-meter run (9:21.50) events.

 

Hitchler owns the No. 2 all-time discus throw in Nebraska prep history of 201-6 and ranked third among all national high school athletes with the performance.

 

Husker Sprinters Take Junior Titles

Nebraska sprinters Dax Danns and Scott Wims each used their debut collegiate seasons to launch national success this season. Both Danns and Wims won the 200-meter dash at a national junior championship this season, Wims at the U.S. Junior Championships and Danns at the South American Championships.

 

Wims clocked a time of 20.86 to take the title for the U.S. and also finished second in the 100-meters with a time of 10.24, just one-hundredth of a second off the lead pace.

 

Competing for his native Guyana, Danns earned his country's first South American Championships medal with a first-place time of 21.27 in the 200-meter dash. Danns also finished third in the 100-meters with a time of 10.48.

 

Their performances earned both Danns and Wims a place at the 2007 Pan American Championships in Sao Paolo, Brazil where they will take on the nation's top talent in early July.

 

 

Record-Breaking Outdoor Season

Following an indoor season that featured no school-record-setting performances, Huskers picked up the pace outdoors with four such efforts in a 10-day period in mid-April.

 

The Nebraska men's 4x200-meter relay team of Scott Wims, Lukas Hulett, Dax Danns and Nate Probasco got the ball rolling by clocking a time of 1:23.12 at the Kansas Relays on April 20, erasing the previous mark of 1:23.27 set in 1987 by a squad comprised of former Huskers Bill Trott, Dave Burrage, Mark Perry and Bob Jelks. The record lasted only a week, as the same Husker team re-set its own mark at 1:22.62 during the Drake Relays on April 27.

 

Brysun Stately followed up NU's first record of 2007 with one of her own in the women's pole vault on April 21 at KU. Stately shattered the Husker record in the event with a winning clearance of 14-3 1/4 to become the first NU women's athlete ever to surpass the 14-foot mark.

 

The performance eclipsed the former NU record held by teammate Jenny Green, who vaulted 13-11 1/4 as a freshman at the 2004 Texas Relays to set what was then a Big 12 Conference record. Stately tied Green's mark on the attempt prior to setting the record, as she reached 13-11 1/4 on her third try to remain in the competition.

 

Stately became the first NCAA athlete to clear 14 feet outdoors this season, and the height was nearly a half foot better than all other national marks recorded prior to the weekend. She also tied the Kansas Relays record set in 2004 by Andrea Dutoit.

 

The most recent school record to fall came at the hands of Issar Yazhbin in the hammer throw. After recording a mark of 207-3 to break Greg Armitage's 1996 record of 207-2 by an inch on his fourth of six attempts at the Nebraska Open, the Husker senior extended that mark to 207-7 while placing third at the NCAA Midwest Regional. Yazhbin entered the season ranked second on NU's list at 206-11, which he registered during the 2005 Big 12 outdoor meet.